Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in it.
By Thomas Zengotita
Literature Review by Yeye Zhang

In his book Mediated, Thomas Zengotita demonstrates the process of mediation in our lives and explains our active, participatory role in the process. He defines mediation as “dealing with reality through something else,” (8) through what Marshall McLuhan identifies as mechanical tools – extensions of man – but also through the effects of these tools on how we experience the world. In recent decades, the proliferation of representational spaces through cable, satellite TV, and the Web, has spurred “a virtual revolution” (116) that constantly flatters and solicits the spectator. The “real” world we live in is becoming more and more like the world we watch on television, and we are part of the reason. The instantaneity of “real-time” has further fused real and representation, conditioning the spectator to be a flattered self, a reflexive self, and ultimately, a mediated self.

However, the “problem of understanding the process of mediation is that you can’t get outside it,” (26) and Zengotita cannot separate his explanation of the mediation without playing into it – constantly referencing pop culture and repeating his own catch phrases i.e. Justin’s Helmet Principle, MeWorld, Virtual Revolution. A professor of anthropology at New York University and a contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine, he is critiquing the media while being part of the media. While Zengotita cannot step away from the mediation process, his refers to his own experience of mediation leaves him endearing, and consequently the audience can relate.

Media is often critiqued as an exploitative force, an instrument of the intellectual and political elite used to mold the way the way we think and shape how we act. However, Zengotita clarifies that the effect of the media on our lives is not a top-down oppression on a passive spectator, that we actively learn how to be representational and to be mediated. The Teenager is the ultimate expression of a mediated person; “the teenager is the creature and creator of pop culture,” (79) ceaselessly extending the spaces of representation. Consumer culture solicits the teenager to the extent that we are conscious of our importance in the world. The flattering media ultimately insulates the spectator into a narcissistic MeWorld.

Conscious, insulated, and reflexive, Zengotita claims we now also realize the optionality of identity in a representational world and can “start deciding who [we] are” (94). We learn how to act; we learn what is appropriate by watching scripted actors. So much that our personality in real life becomes a “tool kit of postures” (187) that is also scripted, though adaptable since we are reflexive. In this process of perpetual representation and reflection, mediated people become actors: Method actors (145). Our participation in the process of mediation is what drives it.

We used to want our children to run free and hence, experience things first-hand for the first time – for real; breaking an arm was part of growing up. However, parents have learned through advertisements, consumer reports, and parenting guides to treat their kids like “hemophiliac heirs to the throne of the Hapsburgs” (29). This is what Zengotita explains as the Justin’s Helmet Principle. Amid vast optionality, we forego option and choose the bike helmet; we insulate because we have been given the obvious benefits of protection, so it must be better than the unknown. But there are dangers in yielding to the given option:

As an adult, we want options, but we don’t want to choose so rather we keep moving in a routine, “the busier the better” (185), and in this insulated routine, Zengotita argues that “representational technologies have colonized our minds” (196). We yield to a structured routine, and even recreational activities become a task when we have to schedule going to the gym into our already busy lives. Nevertheless, the constant feeling of stress out of a numbing routine makes us feel real; “the feeling of being busy is the feeling of being alive” (190). Could this be the beginning of the zombification of the spectator?

Everyday we are inundated with “high-impact” images of violence and misery; Zengotita criticizes the belief that we are apathetic to the real world problem. Rather, we have become psychologically numb in order to defend against the painful and unavoidable intrusion in our lives. Similarly, political apathy took hold because political representations were boring when they weren’t painful. Only when a scandal breaks out in politicians is when politics becomes reality TV (145). Since we would rather watch reality TV than actual events, news reporting has taken an event and transformed it to an event-story. News reports make a story out of reality while its happening then cover that story, so essentially reality is the story. Although we hail the promises of real-time information, the numbing consequences of overrepresentation may lead us all to become zombies.

The attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon on 9/11 perhaps ultimately demonstrated how vulnerable we are as mediated individuals. Although this was not the first time we were attacked on our soil; unlike Pearl Harbor, 9/11 was the first time everyone directly experienced the attack via vast media outlets. As mediated individuals, we all framed the event through our eyes, personalized the event and reacted. But the reaction was not scripted. It was surreal – a reaction beyond the scope of real and representation. The possibility of another attack was real and that possibility could not represented, could not be mediated. At this moment, we rely on other representations to distract us from an unrecognizable real feeling. Zengotita ominously warns that “the bubble of self-regarding self-representation that has insulated us for so long from the suffering of millions in a world dominated by our interest and institutions – the bubble will reform and cradle us again. Until next time” (291).

Our mediated selves have left us no tool for when representation cannot prevail. As Americans, we are most vulnerable in the face of the unknown; at a time when we need to think for ourselves and acknowledge the real possibility of a future attack.

The process of mediation and consumer-driven society has commodified humanity. As the spectator, we are first products and consumers before anything else. Zengotita references the Industrial Revolution that focused on raising the productivity of labor and essentially commodified the laborer. In the same way, the Virtual Revolution has commodified the educated, privileged, work-obsessed spectators. He appeals those who are routinized and in love with their busy lives and their flattered selves, whose “ambition is nurtured by the culture of mediation” (179). Nevertheless, Zengotita’s case is derived from the American experience, whether it will translate to the global stage is unclear. It would do him well to explore what the Global Media Project has touched upon in how terrorists can also exploit the media and how that has conditioned our victim representation.

Zengotita clearly knows his audience, those that like him that may be able to recognize the representational, mediated routine our psychologically numbing lives in order to break away from it this commodification of humanity. It speaks to the Global Media Project that there is truth behind mainstream media, and if we recognize that something is not quite right to not yield to Justin’s Helmet Principle but to seek out the unknown. To combat routine, we should incorporate unstructured time into your life, create more “accidents” so that you can respond for the first-time to new experiences rather than react according to scripted performances. Sound familiar? Zengotita would definitely support the case for the practicing psychogeographic drift.