Message-Force Multipliers and Panic at the Pump

Last Sunday’s New York Times published a massive, well-sourced piece of investigative journalism on news networks’ use of Pentagon-briefed “military analysts” to comment favorably on the war in Iraq. These retired high-ranking officers were called “message force multipliers,” and “surrogates," spinning war news to keep the intervention justified and the outlook positive. Though they looked like neutral experts, some of them also worked for defense industries as lobbyists or consultants, and the broadcasters failed to investigate or disclose a conflict of interest. More damning, the Pentagon apparently used public funds to propagandize the American people, which, believe it or not, is still illegal. Apparently the chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services is requesting an investigation. None of this is much of a surprise. It’s that bad old military-industrial complex, and the “corporate media” is just an industry in league with the folks getting rich selling big guns, exactly what Eisenhower warned us about in 1961.

That said, in his farewell address to the nation, the military-industrial complex was just one of the two threats to American democracy Eisenhower mentioned, and I almost never see reference to the second: the government’s relationship to research:

“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”

It’s easy to point to the fulfillment of Eisenhower’s forecast of the power of the military- industrial complex, but this second “threat” at first seems harder to nail down (except by those of us who smugly congratulate ourselves for eschewing “administrative” research). It’s hard to grasp how the general public was meant to understand it then, and how we can understand it now. This view of “free ideas” – as opposed to ideas that cost a lot and require validation with a patent or other “deliverable” – seems romantic but obsolete. However, when paired with the American dependence on oil, and the lengths to which we go to “protect our interests” in the Middle East, Eisenhower’s skeptical glance at “the power of money” in allocating research funds makes a lot of sense. The scholars he imagines are “hard” scientists – those who might have figured out some energy alternatives by now, had public money been aggressively allocated to this sort of research instead of war (and internally-targeted psy-ops programs put in place to justify war). As critical media scholars, we have some interest in examining the demise of the notion of “free ideas,” and wondering whether the education industry has long been covered by Eisenhower’s first warning, leaving the second warning elegantly phrased and interesting to read, but ultimately redundant.

Jesus Christ, Superman

Given my religious allegiances, and my amateur interest in the possibilities of sequential art (not to be confused with the actual expertise of our own pravdakid, of which see below), it was probably inevitable that I would end up directing readers to this story. And for those of you who aren’t into the whole “Christian” thing; the very notion of a British artist of African heritage using a Japanese variation on a medium generally associated with twentieth century American popular culture, in order to update a several thousand year-old text from the Middle East, should be interesting simply as an example of the emerging, global ecumene, if nothing else.

Enough with the talk of revolution, already

As an Internet skeptic, it always does my heart good to read pieces like Chris Wilson’s recent Slate article on Wikipedia and Digg and the much-hyped Web 2.0, a supposedly more democratic version of the Web (which, if you remember, was supposed to be a more democratic version of the older media forms it was going to replace.) Wilson points out that about one per cent of Wikipedia users account for over half its edits. As for Digg, turns that that many of its top stories—44 percent in 2007, 56 percent in 2006—were submitted by only 100 people. When the site tried to fiddle with its algorithm, in order to reduce the influence of the top contributors, they threatened to boycott. “Despite the fairy tales about the participatory culture of Web 2.0,” writes Wilson, “direct democracy isn’t feasible at the scale on which these sites operate.”

If I had blogged this entry when it first appeared (which is what I meant to do), I would have ended it about here, with some snide comment to the effect of “how are the cyper-utopians were going to try to spin away Wilson’s claims?” Then I came across a link to another piece by Nicholson Baker, on the manner in which Wikipedia deletes subjects it deems unimportant, and his efforts to protect threatened entries: “I found press citations and argued for keeping the Jitterbug telephone, a large-keyed cell phone with a soft earpiece for elder callers; and Vladimir Narbut, a minor Russian Acmeist poet whose second book, Halleluia, was confiscated by the police.” Although I’m not always Mr. Baker’s biggest fan, nonetheless his protests against the administrators’ dicta seemed to fit into the general theme I was working on—Wiki as Internet elitism, disguised as Internet egalitarianism. So I googled the article, hoping to find more fodder for my argument. Turns out Baker is not anti-Wiki. The piece begins, in fact, as follows: “Wikipedia is just an incredible thing.” Reviewing a manual by John Broughton on how to make the most of one’s Wikipedia experience, Baker celebrates the democratic feel of the site. That is, democratic in a sort of Bahktinian, medieval carnivalesque sort of way: Wikipedia is, we are told, “fact-encirclingly huge, and it’s idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of simmering controversies.” Baker’s complaints, such as they are (and even he admits that some entries deserve deletion), are made with an eye to getting more participation, so that other folks will join with him, in his defense of the obscure and the trivial.

(Your point being, perfessor?)

(Uh, not much, I guess. Maybe just this:)

The Internet is not inherently democratic: not in its 2.0 version or any version that is likely to appear in our lifetimes. While it may reduce the importance of some forms of social inequality, it builds upon, perhaps even heightens, the importance of others. At the same time, it would be misguided to ignore the ways in which the new media environment has increased the scope for human creativity, and opened up possibilities for human interaction that most of us couldn’t even have imagined as recently as ten years ago. It would be nice to see more media scholars working at the intersection of those two claims.

Michel Gondry's Vision of Media Democracy

Michel Gondry's most recent film, Be Kind Rewind, may be one of the most poorly-reviewed movies of the last few months. Critics have generally adhered to the notion that Gondry works best with someone else handling the screenwriting (often citing The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as a successful collaboration between Gondry and Charlie Kaufman). Though I'm now writing my second consecutive post about 'how the critics are wrong,' I do beg to differ.

Be Kind Rewind directly concerns ideas that are of direct concern to almost any theorist of the media. The movie takes the form of a melodrama (complete with a Mr. Pinchpenny character and a threatened town landmark) wherein the crew at a video store that features only VHS movies begins to make their own versions of the movies they rent out, putting them in conflict with regulatory agencies and big media. (far better plot synopses are available; go find one if you want) The theme of the movie--perhaps stated in an artlessly bold manner--is that we should like it when members of a culture (alone and, especially, in locally-based groups) make their own 'stuff'. Who can make a better version of Ghostbusters? Some jamochs from New Jersey. Who can tell the life story of Fats Waller? The people. It's a blatantly populist film (another weakness, perhaps), and it resonates with much of the John Dewey-derived theory and research concerning organic community-building through the media.

As someone who generally rankles at populist appeals (even a defender of professionalism), I find the movie compelling not because of its pitting of big corporations against 'the people', but because of its less blatant celebration of making movies. Gondry once made a short film about himself called (if memory serves) "I'm Always 12". Right. The movie is largely about getting in touch with the kind of enthusiasm me and my friends had when we made 8 mm movies (most of them Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-offs) in my suburban neighborhood in the early 1980s. This is, perhaps, a kind of weakness of the movie (after all, not all people have access to media-making tools). But, taken as a utopian vision--which is I think appropriate--Be Kind Rewind pictures a world where everyone is working in front of and behind the camera. And I must admit, I'm with the Deweyans on this one. Bravo, Gondry! At the very least (and I mean the VERY least), you've made a case for community-based media that actually celebrates the potential, without getting bogged down in the dilemmas we have faced so far.

There's much more to be said here, about Be Kind Rewind's potential relevance to the whole "Youtube" phenomenon, but I will let that wait for a different day.

The Maus Effect: Comic Book Criticism and The Middle-Brow

It's a well-worn story by now. The comic book started off as a truly maligned product of the Great Depression. After World War II, comic books in the U.S. explored a number of different genres. One of the most popular was the crime comic book. With their abundant violence and apparent celebration of a criminal lifestyle, crime comics became a kind of stand-in for the whole medium, and an increasingly well-organized attack on comic books eventually (with a number of ironic reversals along the way) took the form of the Comic Book Code in 1954. The Comic Book Code a truly demanding self-censorship code that (along with the introduction of television) relegated comic books to the lowbrow. Flash forward thirty years, and we find in the 1980s the introduction of the comic book reborn: the graphic novel.

The graphic novel was (and remains) the new, more adult comic book. Graphic novels wore their cultural aspirations on their mylar sleeves, with fancy art and 'adult' themes. There is probably no better example of what the 'graphic novel' was about than Art Spiegelman's MAUS. Released in the late 1980s, MAUS enjoyed glorious praise for addressing the Holocaust through the form of a comic book. It was widely reviewed in magazines and newspapers throughout the U.S. (and would win a Pulitzer Prize for literature). The classic review went somewhat as follows: "We all know that comic books used to be about superheroes and silliness. This new graphic novel is about the Holocaust, and shows us that comic books can be better than we ever thought. MAUS has, effectively, breathed new life into the medium of comix."

For the critics, MAUS became nothing less than the redemption of a medium (mind you: a medium that few of those critics had bothered to notice before they picked up MAUS). I have nothing bad to say about MAUS, but it is difficult for any single work (graphic novel or whatever) to prop up an entire medium, and this reaction to MAUS has become a broader theme in comic book criticism.

So, when newspapers and magazines (I'm thinking in particular of the NY Times book review) feature reviews of comic books, their reviews often favor those works that seem least like what comic books supposedly used to be. It gets frustrating, seeing the same old "comic books aren't just for kids anymore" observation 20 years after the 'MAUS moment'.

The recent graphic novel that most clearly benefited from the fawning MAUS effect on comic book criticism was Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. For those who do not know, Persepolis is an autobiographical tale about the author's growing up in pre-revolution Iran, moving to Switzerland during the Iran-Iraq war, and returning to Iran afterward. It has recently been turned into a (more or less well-reviewed) feature film.

Something bugs me about this, but before I get on what bugs me, allow me to set the record straight: I think MAUS is great. I also very much enjoyed Persepolis in graphic novel and movie form. But even though I find myself in agreement with the consensus that these are amongst the salvageable (even essential) graphic novels of our time, I cringe when I read the reviews of these works. Because what I see in the criticism involving these works is a kind of lazy criticism, which relies on assumptions that don't work. Specifically:
a) the assumption that comic books have always been 'bad', and then got saved when critics started noticing them. Why do I disagree? Because it turns about 50 years of comic book art into something that can be comfortably blown off. This, in turn, buys into familiar (and all-too-easily mocked) assumptions about the separateness of high and low culture.
b) the assumption that 'serious' themes make great art. This is classic middle-brow stuff. As if the "very special episode" of tv's "Facts of Life" is probably going to be better art than other episodes of "Facts of Life." Or as if Jerry Lewis's almost unseen movie about the Holocaust is better than other Jerry Lewis movies. Giving a pass to culture that deals with 'issues' is not good criticism. Points for good intentions can be saved for different arenas. It only insults comics all the more when critics fawn over 'issues'-related graphic novels.

So: do I HATE Persepolis? No. I thought it was pretty good. But I find it disappointing that commentary about it (as graphic novel and as movie) dealt with the supposed novelty of graphic novels that touch on serious themes, instead of dealing with: the quality of the draftsmanship, the writing of the dialogue, the pacing of the story, the decision to use black & white, the autobiographical mode in comics in general, Satrapi's own voice, and much else.

Talk about getting upset about small things...

LOFTY TITLE AND ALL...

In this, the inaugural post for Perpetual Ferment, I would like to outline who we are and what we're trying to do with this blog.

Who we are: Fernando Bermejo, Mark Brewin, Jen Horner, and Dave Park. Those are the names.

What we are trying to do: discuss the media in a blog-worthy way. The emphasis will be on media theory, research, and criticism. The tone (appropriate for a blog, methinks) will be relatively informal. A key word for me, and I believe for my co-authors here as well, will be 'autonomy.' We are not trying to represent any particular point of view in media studies. We are, instead, trying to keep our own ideas dynamic by discussing issues that matter to us, and that provoke disagreement amongst us.

With our titular reference to "Ferment in the Field," we position ourselves (pretentiously, perhaps) as folks who are using this blog as a way to think past some of the central positions oft advanced in media studies. We hope to get beyond some of the internecine squabbles that have defined the field of media studies: qualitative vs. quantitative, critical vs. administrative, political economy vs. cultural studies, and so on.

If this sounds like a scattershot and amateurish idea for a media studies blog, so be it. The study of the media could use some more scattershot and amateurish ideas.

Excelsior.