Megan Loucks
*Extra Credit* Thematic Essay

To begin this musing on YouTube, I think it is only appropriate that I refer you to something that began this class for all of us way back in February: the 300. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNqiSkd1M6k&feature=related
This is the PG Version, where swords and guns are replaced by cakes and candy. It is international relations done right. Utopia indeed.

As of 2007 it was calculated that every month, YouTube receives 20 million visitors. Each day, 100 million video clips are watched and 65,000 new videos are posted. Much has been made about the popularity of YouTube and the reverberations felt in mainstream news outlets by its videos. The phenomenon surrounding such video-sharing web sites (the social, political, and/or economic) has been called “The YouTube Effect”. In the current presidential race, campaigns have used the YouTube platform to reach out to young voters. And who could forget the first ever “CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate” on July 23rd 2007, which as some people said, helped make political debate matter again.

Millions of people spend time on YouTube, but what are they watching? The question posed to me for this class was what this week’s list of the most popular videos on YouTube say about the influence of YouTube and society at large. But I wonder, does video popularity necessary translate into influence? Does this really mark a shift in how the average person interacts with the media, and the community around them? These are big questions, and perhaps a look at the “most popular list” will help.

For those YouTube newbies, one should know that the politics and strategies behind making it on the “most viewed”, “most favorited”, or “most discussed” lists are heated points of discussion (and controversy) among the YouTube community. In fact, the ability of these lists to accelerate a video or user’s popularity can not be underestimated. I, like many others, have often clicked on a video in the “most viewed” list, only to finish the video with the aching feeling that I deserve those five minutes of my life back. You learn quickly about the capricious nature of celebrity and that numbers are too often misleading. The influence that the sheer set-up of YouTube (layout, list organization, featured videos ,etc ) has on the dynamics of video sharing and thus, “The YouTube Effect”, deserves its own separate discussion.

So in acknowledging that these different lists give different meanings to the term “popularity” I chose “most favorited videos of the day” as a good balance. On Monday night I looked up the Top 10 most favorited videos of the day and spent the next half hour watching… a Michael Jackson impersonation, a pseudo-music video, a video game review, a time-lapse painting, and the always popular booty-shaking female. The latter will not be included in this analysis. Yes, a very typical day on YouTube. More entertaining than it sounds.

In describing the list, I will do my best to connect these videos to broader YouTube trends, and if I’m lucky maybe even psycho-social critique.

So taking the #1 spot is a clip from Britain’s Got Talent, favorited 4,446 times and viewed over 400,000 times. No surprise with this one. The demonstration of exotic and impressive talents is a hallmark of YouTube. The average Joe or Jane or even Mohamed, can easily have their spot in the starlight. In this clip, Suleman Mirza, who notes himself as “one of the best Michael Jackson tribute artists”, adds an Asian Banghra flair to his dance with the help of a turban-clad dance partner.

The second place video, favorited 1,578, is difficult to describe, because I am withholding the particularly strong feelings I have about the band’s music. It’s the teen sensation the Jonas Brothers and their song “Kung-Fu Grip” played in time with a slideshow of the three dark-haired bushy-browed brothers in their signature tight pants and purity rings.

A moment of Jonas Brothers lyrical zen before going on to the #3 spot.

“ Sometimes I wish I had a kung-fu grip;
Never let her slip away, she'd be my girl
….
I'm so in love with her.
I don't care who knows that I'm ready to fight, ready to go;
Just like a GI Joe ”

Walter B couldn’t have said it better.
In third place is something this class will appreciate. “Funny Cats #4”, subtitled “Caturday Forever!”, shows us all that the internet’s mutual celebration of cat obsession will never stay contained to Fridays. Favorited 1,396 times on Monday night, a check today revealed that over 637,000 people have tuned in. The #4 heading belies the impossibly large volume of similar pet-hommage videos, particularly of cats. Users compile funny cat photos into slideshows, often with some animation to amplify the sheer hilarity of seeing kittens tucked inside a woman’s bra. I have stayed away from these videos in the past, but while watching the whole 1 minute and 55 seconds worth of cats and kittens (set to pulsating techno music), I couldn’t help but crack up at the sight of “zombie cat” or “invisible onion and knife cat”. Kudos to user “HilariousVideosLOL” for converting me to the dark side.

Grabbing the #4 spot with a close 1,068 favorites is “Grand Theft Auto 4 Video Review – Exclusive!!! (Xbox 360)”. I am not a video-gamer, but the review was informative and well done. Praising the storyline, the game play, and the ability to play your friends online, user Mysteriouskk shows continuous scenes of the game being played in all its realistic graphic glory. He adds that a new feature is the “occasional morality twist”, meaning that your decisions to kill or not to kill somebody will affect dialogue and future missions. It appears that reality has finally been inserted into virtual reality. With all the hubbub about GTA being a violent soul-sucking video game, it seems that the makers finally threw parents a bone.

The #5 spot is a video of an artist painting a classic Pin-Up-themed woman, but sped up to meet the continually decreasing attention span of our generation (a quick search on YouTube reveals 24,700 time lapse videos). To be quite honest, even just five minutes left me unsatisfied. In a strange way, watching it made me long for The Joy of Painting; those simpler, better days, when Bob Ross would explain why we never really make mistakes, but rather just “happy little accidents”.

#6 or “RSMV Lay Down- Priestess” is a music video of the song Lay Down by Priestess made by assembling graphics and characters from the video game Runescape by Jagex. In the description the user explains “If you are not a fan of Runescape, and found this as a search result for the band Priestess or the song Lay Down, please simply go back and continue searching the results. It's not my intention for this to be a common result”. To him I say, enjoy the accidental fame, enjoy it! The video does seem to have a serious contingent of fans though, who inquire with such questions as “How'd you do the sleep emote?”, which is of course “a spell from the Lunar Magic spellbook”, not to be confused with “a teleport orb from goblin city Dorgesh-kaan”.
Trust me, I am just as lost as you are.

#7 is Prince performing Radiohead’s “Creep” live at Coachella. Famous musicians frequently are in the top favorite lists. This is especially true for music videos for songs that are on the Billboard Top 100. And the nature of online video posting frequently produces an instaneous concert clip or celebrity snafoo caught on tape (or both – see “Beyonce Falling Down Stairs”).

Taking the #8 spot is “Speak Out Against Hate Speech” : a seven minute video posted by tyleroakley but made through the collaboration of about a dozen youtubers. The video description explains, “Through the new Sharing options, this message could spread internationally and could be featured globally. Do your part to fight for peace and equality and make the message be seen.” The video shows YouTubers, many of them well-known faces among the YouTube community, repeating certain words of hate and then asking the viewer how they think those words make people feel. It’s a simple, well edited video with a powerful message.

A frequently overlooked aspect of YouTube is the networking done within the YouTube Community. Video collaborations like these are a frequent siting. The ability of YouTube to connect people across the world through video adds a whole new dimension to internet socializing.

#9 is “Many Chinese Students attack Tibet People in Seoul, S Korea 2008. 04. 27.” There have been many videos posted recently in reaction to the olympic torch run and violence in Tibet. The chinese government has received repeated hits from YouTube's free media. Frankly, I am surprised such a serious topic made it to number nine, though “violent titles” automatically get an advantage in attracting hits.

For #10 or “Ron Paul Hits it out of the Park on CNN American Morning”, Ron Paul proclaims to John Roberts that the “GOP can’t shut me out” and that he is still in the race. The author celebrates the fact that the video made the front page of Digg magazine, reflecting yet again, the ability of YouTube to infiltrate other media sources.

Despite all my loyalty to YouTube, I still question the hype about the “YouTube Effect”. I see it more as an evolution, rather than a revolution. In many ways this way of video sharing is a great equalizer. The common man is both judger and judged. There is much excitement about the interaction of YouTube and mainstream television news outlets. Yet the videos referenced, like any other news clip, are often taken out of context, used to advance political agendas, or meaningless fluff. The biggest effect in my mind is that the average American, presented now with so many diverse video formats, is being forced to learn that video, like any other medium, is something that must be read. And this, is a major contribution.

But above all, YouTube is what you make of it. Depending on what you are looking for, and where you click, YouTube can be bare bones escapism or mind-opening education. It can be a source of exposure to other cultures or a place where stereotypes are mocked and reinforced (for example the Japanese seem to dominantly represented by gameshows like Human Tetris). And yes the trash, hate speech, and propaganda videos are there. The mainstream wins more than you would hope. The amount of tribute videos and movie re-edits seems to reveal an America ( a young America? ) that is bored, so so bored. YouTube can seem to embody a neverending pursuit of and obsession with celebrity. And of course, it is a place where reputations are made and broken. Many an awkward teenage boy have been forever sent into hiding. (The first to fall was Star Wars Kid, I predict “Fat kid on rollercoaster” will be the next).

The ability of YouTube to give people a sense of voice and influence is undoubtedly incredible, however contested that actual influence is. The ability to film and upload a video doesn’t require the kind of technical know-how of website creation. You don’t need to have a mastery of language (the butchery of the english language is more than welcome on discussion boards). While scouring YouTube videos, one can’t help but marvel at the sheer diversity and complexity of humanity. YouTube can be the source of that warm nostalgic feeling when a video awakens a memory like nothing else ever could. It often appears like condensed soup: American pop culture in a can. And in a world where time is crunched, saved, and cherished, YouTube fills a necessary niche: compacted entertainment for the ever growing pace of this global human network.

1. Naim, Moisés. « The YouTube Effect ». http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3676. Foreign Policy Online. January/February 2007.

Posted by Megan Loucks at 06:49 PM | Permalink

In the Introduction to “Worship at the Altar of Convergence,” Henry Jenkins defines convergence as the “flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences” (2). He mentions that media convergence is where “old and new media collide” and where “grassroots and corporate media intersect” (2). Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” also discusses a sort of convergence between the old, more contemplative forms of art like unique paintings and sculpture and photography or the new, faster-paced media of the cinema. He sees the newer art form as a new mode of representation because of the technological advances on which it depends—particularly the advances in mechanical reproducibility—as well as the fact that it presents new ways of viewing and interacting with art. In the same way that Walter Benjamin considered photography and later, film, new stages in representation, the convergence of media is also a new stage in representation because it too relies on technological advances and mechanical reproduction, and it also changes the way that people view art.

Mechanical reproduction, in Benjamin’s view, makes art more about exhibition and less about a cult experience. Of course Benjamin does mention that this reproducibility diminishes a piece’s “aura,” or authenticity, by removing it from its original context. But he also discusses how it “emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.” Accordingly, reproducibility means that one no longer needs to travel to a specific church to see a specific statue, new works of art such as photographic prints can be moved to a museum, and movies are even less limited to one location because they can be reproduced in multiple towns. Further, each of the distributed copies is indistinguishable from the original piece. Benjamin even claims that “mechanical reproduction is inherent in the very technique of film production.” In this way, film is the epitome of a type of art that is made to be reproduced, thus following his progression of art which claims that the “work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.” With mechanical reproduction, art in general becomes more about exhibiting and being seen by more people.

With modern convergence of media on the web, even more people can view the art than could view the films that Benjamin describes in 1936. For example, as of April 26, 2008, 15,388,580 people have viewed the popular YouTube video “Shoes,” which was posted only two years ago (YouTube). Moreover, these works get even more exposure because of convergence of media, and the ability of major media companies either to republish or at least reference the artwork in another context. In the same way that mechanical reproduction spreads art to many more viewers, the technology that allows viewers to broadcast their art over the web also expands that art to many more viewers.

Not only can more people view art with the convergence of media on the web, but convergence of new technologies also represents a new form of representation because it allows more people to partake in art production. Starting with the 8mm Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination in 1963, now many people can capture news events on their cameras, cell phones, or on whatever recording technology they have. Moreover, web technology like YouTube allows people to share their art globally. Unlike news of the past, news channels are likely to broadcast an event as a composite of footage from many of these ordinary people who happen to capture an event with their personal technology.
***

For Walter Benjamin, film presents new art techniques that combine to make a totally new art form. He describes how the technique of montage allows filmmakers to put images together in a completely new way, thus conveying the artist’s point of view in a new manner. Close up and slow motion options expand viewers’ horizons. Furthermore, for the first time, worlds with which many of us have little practical experience are opened up to us. This “immense and unexpected field of action” includes every location from taverns to office buildings and allows many of us to explore and see them for the first time.

Benjamin discusses how film is a change in representation because unlike earlier art forms, it successfully creates “changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator.” One critic identifies the technique of montage, introduced with film, as the way through which film creates these changes. Specifically, he describes how montage “rips things from their original place in an assigned sequence and reassembles them in ever changing combinations” (Nichols).

The development of montage, according to Benjamin, affects how the viewer interacts with art. Whereas a painting “invites the spectator to contemplation,” the film moves too quickly for the viewer to meditate on one image. He claims that the images “cannot be arrested” and even quotes a radical thinker who posits that in watching movies, his “thoughts have been replaced by moving images” (Duhamel, quoted in Benjamin).

Montage is extremely important for the current artwork on the web because it allows an artist to take known things and splice them together to make a new meaning. An artist can take a speech (for example, Barack Obama’s 2004 national convention speech) and cut it down to what he or she thinks are its essential elements. This editing destroys the illusion of objectivity and enhances a specific point of view, along the lines of what David Hoffmann discussed recently in our class. So though it’s Obama’s speech from the 2004 DNC, it’s the parts that a filmmaker thinks are salient, and set to the music (in one case, the Gladiator soundtrack) that he or she chooses. He or she may not be painting a subject, but is still creating art with his or her message and point of view.

Of course, this technique is what film and montage introduced to the world many years ago. What’s new in the modern era is that people end up distributing their points of view widely over the web. YouTube’s tag line, after all, is “Broadcast Yourself,” which encourages people to do just that. Furthermore, because media corporations can also access the web, your information might reach an even larger audience if they choose to comment on it, either on TV or radio broadcasts or even in Op/Eds in newspapers. In conjunction with convergence of media on the web, montage becomes a much bigger player in the modern world because these point-of-view films can be broadcast much more widely.

Another way that film establishes a new form of representation is that it separates the actor from directly influencing the art. Benjamin comments that film separates the actor from the art because the cameraman inserts his or her point of view into the filmmaking. Whereas an actor on a stage has control over how he presents himself to the audience, in a film the cameraman can film the actor from different angles, or use B roll during the actor’s speech, and thus manipulate how audiences view the actor. Similarly, with convergence on the web, one media source (film) interacts with the publication on the web. As a consequence, viewers are even farther away from the actual event (behind the filmmaker, and then the publication site). They are seeing a YouTube video as a “YouTube Video,” not as a “film by so-and-so” or simply “such-and-such event.”

Moreover, convergence of media on the web allows a shift in how art interacts with reality. While art has always provoked thought and even controversy, with painting the provoked thoughts were more like personal reflections. Now, with widespread YouTube distribution, these thoughts become international discussion and debate. A very clear example is the Bert/Osama picture, which Jenkins focused on. What began as a simple image on a website from California made its way onto anti-American propaganda in Pakistan, which made later appeared on CNN. The convergence between Photoshop technology, worldwide distribution, and attention from news sources such as CNN fueled a very intense international debate. Even the author of the image claimed that his “Bert is Evil” site “has always been contained and distanced from big media. This issue throws it out in the open” and moves the image “too close to reality” (Dino Ignacio, quoted in Jenkins, 2). Convergence now means that art suddenly and acutely influences how we interact on an international level.

Along these lines, Benjamin saw that the evolution of art into mechanically reproduced cinema changed the way that art interacted with politics, in that cinema gave political leaders (and especially the cult of personality, Fascist leaders) more power over the people. Web publication similarly signals a shift in the way that art and politics interact because new and more available technology allows filmmakers to portray political figures in new and interesting ways. We already discussed the filmmaker’s control in broadcasting the salient elements of Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. Certainly, that sort of montage means that political leaders are presented in radically new ways. However, the ‘Obamagirl’ video presents Obama in an entirely new way-mashing together song lyrics, pictures of him, and a video of a girl strutting around New York City. No longer is the political leader’s appearance restricted to the speeches that he presents to the crowds. New technology allows all of the separate elements listed above to be combined into a single (hilarious) video that portrays the presidential candidate in an entirely new light.

Moreover, the widespread video distribution on YouTube allows political candidates to get much more exposure. Now, Obama’s 2004 convention speech is all over YouTube (there are ~22 different videos of the speech), and one can see 378 videos of the recent Philadelphia presidential debate. In January, Facebook even broadcaster the New Hampshire debates and allowed people to comment on them. CNN later reported on those public comments, meaning that television viewers were bombarded with news information from many different angles and sources. Considering these effects of convergence, candidates are surely reaching wider audiences. But whereas Benjamin was afraid of increased political audience, this increased distribution results in a dramatic increase in voter participation. In California, 31% of the eligible voting population voted in the in 2004 primary and 41% voted in 2007. In Iowa 6% caucused in 2004 and 16% this past January 2008 (GMU Website).

Another intriguing aspect is that Benjamin wrote about the relationship between art and politics in 1936, before World War II. Considering his emphasis on the interaction between art and politics and war, Benjamin would probably find the following quote, by Hollywood producer William Harrison (Will) Hays in 1939, very interesting: “The primary purpose of motion pictures is entertainment—entertainment which will be effective as such, and entertainment which is, at its best, inspirational” (Cited in Koppes). Clearly, this producer does not see film as promoting a political position, or as trying to influence the public at all. Towards the end of Benjamin’s essay, he writes that “distraction as provided by art presents a covert control” over the masses. If he heard this quote, he would probably point out that though the film industry’s goal may be to provide entertainment, even passive entertainment can be influential. He would point to the masses’ ability to absorb architectural changes passively and thus aid in the evolution of architecture. In the same way, the masses can absorb political messages from film.

Film on the web is clearly a new art form. Suddenly, a video of a man who can fit himself entirely in a rubber balloon is a work of art, as is a compilation photo of Bert from Sesame Street with Osama bin Laden. Convergence of media on the web allows this new art form to exist. Moreover, convergence of media on the web changes the way that art interacts with politics, much like the creation of film changed the way that art interacted with politics in the early part of the 20th century. In this way, convergence of media on the web certainly does represent a new art form.

From this realization, the important question becomes: “what role will this new art form play in the world’s future?” This idea echoes the question that Benjamin put to art in 1936 when he titled his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Not only does work of art mean the piece of art, but it also means the job of art. In this way, Benjamin examines the role of art in his society. Film and photography certainly continued to play key roles in politics after his essay. Despite Will Hays’ comment, 2500 Hollywood films were released between 1939 and 1945, many of which had to do with the war (Koppes). War photography throughout the Vietnam War sparked a lot of controversy about America’s actions there. In a similar vein, we can discuss how the convergence of media on the web will interact with politics today. As I already mentioned, the convergence of media on the web will have a profound effect on political campaigns including the current presidential campaign because the candidates receive more exposure as well as different types of exposure. Moreover, as the Bert and Osama picture demonstrates, the convergence of media on the web will have a profound effect on how we view, enforce, or condemn freedom of speech internationally and internally. Finally, on a more basic level, convergence of media on the web means that individual human beings will be suddenly much more visible to the world, either by creating videos (or Bert/Osama pictures) or by being in videos that are distributed on the web. I believe that this increase in individual exposure will eventually affect how we live our public lives. Some will become fearful that anything we say or do may be broadcast, and some will be encouraged to pursue new and exciting artistic adventures that themselves push the limits of our new technology into the next form of representation.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1936. [Accessed April 23, 2008]. < http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/rcrooks/toolbox/common_knowledge /general_communication/benjamin.html>.

Jenkins, Henry. Introduction. Worship at the Altar of Convergence. By Jenkins. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 1-24.

Koppes, Clayton and Black, Gregory. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II. University of California Press 1990. viii, 21.

LIAMKYLESULLIVAN. 2006. Shoes [online]. [Accessed April 26, 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA>.

Nichols, Bill. “The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems.” Screen. 21 (1): 22-46. Winter 1988.

Presidential Primary Turnout Rates. March 17, 2008. United States Elections Project at George Mason University. April 26, 2008 .

Posted by Julia Hellman at 11:45 PM | Permalink

Verónica Cortez
Global Media
Thematic Essay
April 22nd, 2008

…there is a shame as well as a shock in looking at the close-up of real horror. Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it – say, the surgeons at the military hospital where the photograph was taken – or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be (Sontag, 42).

CNN and Al Jazeera are understood as peculiar developments, news networks that operate 24-hours a day 7 days a week and continually provide their audiences with breaking news. News networks like these have gained quite a following amongst audiences that want to know what is happening around the world in real time. Cable News Network was started in the 1980s while the Al Jazeera network much more recently, in the late 1990s. Both of these networks have different methodologies in presenting the news while also giving importance to different events throughout the world based on their location and core audience. The two networks’ differences ultimately define the audiences they gain favor with and those with whom they do not, but are they truly that different?

To understand what is happening today in Iraq many Americans rely on CNN to give them the facts on the goings on both in the United States and the rest of the world. The CNN effect is the idea that with images the media is controlling the responses of the government and citizens of the U.S. Susan Sontag in her book Regarding the Pain of Others argues that images is one of the only ways we learn and experience war. “The understanding of war among people who have not experienced war is now chiefly a product of the impact of these images” (21). Americans in essence are using the pictures and images that are displayed 24-hours a day via these types of news networks to understand and sympathize, or not, with the soldiers that are fighting the war or another such story.

Al Jazeera has had its own effect with its development. This particular news network was originally understood to change news because of its willingness to show images and videos that other stations would not. One of the network’s most striking and/or controversial moments, the Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda videos during the aftermath of September 11. “Conscripted as part of journalism, images were expected to arrest attention, startle, surprise” (Sontag, 22-23). These videos, images, etc are what Sontag is talking about, they startle and surprise, but most importantly they achieve the goal of getting people’s attention. The Al Jazeera network is accused of promoting anti-American sentiment; it also garnered the U.S. government’s notice in an episode where President Bush reportedly considered bombing one of their stations. It is arguable whether attention like this is good or bad, but stations that are critical of governments expectedly create animosities between themselves and those that they are criticizing.

Which is more powerful the Al Jazeera effect or the CNN effect? Professor Yaron Ezrahi, during the April 16th lecture spoke about the role of the media and how it controls and shapes our reality, both of these networks shape the realities of those that use it for information. Sometimes images presented by television news networks create a different message than the one that governments and important players are trying to present. No other news format can compete with television and the images it has the ability to show. Al Jazeera is an autonomous network, politically and economically, and therefore has no reason to abide by government rules, although, recently, under pressure from many different countries and their governments has “become civilized.” Does this mean that its power will diminish? The pressures that these other governments are putting on this news network revolve around the images they show, and if that is where real power lays will the agree?

Sebastian Kampf also made some interesting points during this same lecture. Those that want to win today’s media wars must use the media as a part of the military. By controlling the media, governments can make it appear that it is a “costless war” and through this continue receiving support. Invariably, other networks are able to present a different side of the story and through this create support on that side of the war. The visual framing of wars is no longer only granted to one side of the conflict, but has become more accessible and more prominent on all sides. The CNN effect is that which is used as a part of the military that which causes governmental responses that the general population can agree with because of the images they see. The Al Jazeera effect does not necessarily create governmental responses but creates a response amongst its audience nonetheless that can then be harmful to the U.S. or to another governmental body.

Images are the ones that create these responses. Susan Sontag gives a sort of explanation:
It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked…No moral charge attaches to the representation of these cruelties…There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching (41).
The audiences cannot turn away from images like these; they cannot turn off the television when a news reporter is presenting the exact same gruesome footage over and over again. People have even come to seek out these types of images in movies like SAW which desensitize them to the brutality of certain images. Human beings want to be able to look at these pictures and videos and be able to flinch or not do so presenting their own humanity. The melodrama of movies like this with victim, villain and hero exist only to later be passed on to the real world. During the coverage of September 11th there was not just news reporting, but a story itself unfolding about the evil villains, the fallen victims and the incredible heroes that would come to the rescue. The coverage was no longer just unbiased coverage, but came with adjectives and descriptions of people that elicit certain responses from those that hear them.

Which is most powerful the Al Jazeera or CNN effect? There is no real answer for that, but there is something else, the media is the most influential and most powerful in the end. No one network or one type of news reporting wins, they all do because of the impact they have on their audiences. When there are thousands or millions of people recurring only to the media for their news and information whatever comes out on that news network, with whatever spin they put on it, has an effect. Media in general has the most powerful effect.

Posted by Veronica Cortez at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Extra Credit Thematic Essay
Megan Billman

Director Deborah Scranton has pioneered a new method of filmmaking: directing from a distance, or "virtual filmmaking". She created her documentaries, "The War Tapes" (2006) and "Bad Voodoo's War" (2008), by giving cameras to soldiers deployed to Iraq and directing them via e-mail and instant messenger. Footage captured by the soldiers was sent to Scranton's home in New Hampshire where it was edited. In this essay I will relate the practice of "virtual filmmaking" to existing theories of virtualization, in an attempt to shed light upon the significance of this methodology in the context of critical film studies. In Virtuous War, James Der Derian asserts that while virtualization enables the effects of proximity (the ability to attack) through unprecedented perceptual mobility, this transformation also enables the denial of death. I assert that in film- making as in war- making, virtualization has the potential to enable virtual mobility and the effects of unprecedented proximity, and yet may also encourage denial (in this case denial of the cinema apparatus) and result in misguided claims to objectivity and realism. I will conclude by relating Scranton's responses to these challenges, which is, appropriately, to remain loyal to the local and specific, to the personal and the subjective.

Of our newly mobile mode of war- making, Der Derian writes, "Virtual war is the ability to choose [any] spot on a map and effect damage upon it or the people residing there." This mobility is crucial not only to offensive attacks but also to military training. Reflecting upon a trip to the US military training camp at Fort Irwin, Der Derian describes the efforts undertaken to "take American troops as close to the edge of war as the technology of simulation and the rigors of the environment will allow."(3) Our virtual mobility enables the effects of proximity. It "collapses the distance between here and there, near and far" (10).

Mobility and proximity have been crucial concerns for filmmakers and critics since the evolution of the medium in the late nineteenth century. The camera enabled a revolution in perception, offering the average individual the chance to 'see' events and places far from her everyday reality. Dziga Vertov wrote of the transformation effected upon him by film. "Starting today," he wrote, "I am free forever of human immobility” (Virilio, 20).

In making "The War Tapes" and "Bad Voodoo's War", Scranton was more mobile that Vertov could have ever imagined. Twenty-one soldiers filmed for her and cameras were "mounted on gun turrets, inside dashboards and [on] POV mounts on their Kevlar helmets and vests" (thewartapes.com). Thus Scranton was (virtually) able to participate in raids, make dangerous night passages across mine-laden roads, and spend time in the unit's barracks.

Der Derian identifies the ways in which virtualization enables the denial of the traumatic dimensions of war. He writes, "virtuous wars promote a vision of bloodless, humanitarian, hygienic wars" having the "power to commute death, to keep it out of sight, out of mind" (xv-xvi). In drawing parallels between this theory of the virtual war, and dominant frameworks in critical film studies, I am struck by the relation between the denial of death by the soldier and the denial of the cinema apparatus by the spectator. In the same way that the virtualization of war facilitates the denial of the traumatic fact of mortality, the virtualization of filmmaking encourages the spectator's denial of the cinema apparatus and her mistaken identification with the look of the camera. The relation between denial, misrecognition and cinematic identification is not new. However, it seems to me that in the age of virtualization it is easier to suspend disbelief than ever before.

The virtualization of filmmaking facilitates the denial of the director to such an extent that, during a recent Global Media Lab, Prof. Der Derian was led to wonder whether Scranton was in fact, “showing the path to [her own] disappearance” (GML 4/9). Scranton replied that her methodology in no way diminishes the significance of the director. She sees it as her task to “amplify the voices of the soldiers” and to provide a context and framework for the audience to understand their stories. Though she does not appear in "The War Tapes," her intervention is foregrounded in "Bad Voodoo's War," which includes shots of her seated at her computer messaging with the soldiers, and collecting tapes from her mailbox.

Der Derian asserts that virtualization has rendered the relationship between reality and representation highly ambiguous. He writes, "virtuality collapses the distance between fact and fiction" (10); It “represents a convergence of the means by which we distinguish the… original from the reproduced” (xx). In the field of literary criticism, academics have, for many years, gone to great lengths to articulate the degree of proximity between the filmic text and reality. In his seminal essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Walter Benjamin describes the promise that mechanical reproduction holds for the individual "to get closer to the original by way of its likeness, its reproduction"(2). Claims to realism have been particularly contested in relation to documentary whose very name expresses an ontological assumption that film can show the truth in a transparent way (Silverman).

If we equate proximity with access to objective reality it would seem that virtual filmmaking, which enables the spectator to get ‘closer’ to the subject than ever before, might enable unparalleled access to the real. Scranton, however, staunchly refuses the possibility of objectivity in film, asserting that the notion of critical distance is "an incredibly egotistical construct" as "everyone brings their life experience" to their work. She is hopeful that we might catch glimpses of reality in “"contrasting ground-level narratives" but maintains that "it is only when we are human beings first that we approach that truth."

Virtual war- making and virtual film- making represent manifestations of the "urge to expand the range of vision and detection," to “push back… the limits of investigation, in both time and space " (Virilio, 75). At this moment in which “the surfaces of the globe are [effectively] directly present to one another”(Virilio, 46) it is more crucial than ever that we remember that war does kill and that representations are mediated.

References:
Allen, Tim. "Perceiving Contemporary Wars," 1999
Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy," 1996
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," 1935
Aufderheide, Patricia."Your Country, My Country: How Films About The Iraq War Construct Publics" in The Journal of Cinema and Media - Volume 48, Number 2, Fall 2007, pp. 56-65
Der Derian, James. Virtuous War, Westview Press, Oxford 2001
Jenkins, Henry. "Worship at the Altar of Convergence," in Convergence Culture, New York University Press, New York, 2006
Musser, Charles."Film Truth in the Age of George W. Bush" in The Journal of Cinema and Media - Volume 48, Number 2, Fall 2007, pp. 9-35
Silverman, Michael, class notes, Cinematic Coding and Narrativity.
Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema, Verso, London, 1989

Posted by Megan Billman at 12:11 AM | Permalink

Thematic Essay
Josh Sargent

“Al Quaeda is winning the media war.”

Col. Lawrence Killmeier

“O Muslim youth in the East and West, who listen to God calling you: ‘Go forth to war, whether it be easy or difficult for you, and strive hard in God’s cause with your possessions and your lives.’ ”

Abu Yahya Al-Libi

"Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

President George W. Bush

Continue reading "Who is winning the media war?" »

Posted by Joshua Sargent at 08:46 PM | Permalink

The “Morbid Symptoms” of Online Journalism

Q. If the old media is dying and the new is not fully born, what morbid symptoms do we see online?

Drawn from:
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” (Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks)

Before I begin my diagnosis of any “morbid symptoms,” it would help if I gave some background on the author quoted above. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian Marxist whose philosophy went on to influence everyone from Fidel to Foucault. Writing behind prison walls he described a “cultural hegemony,” whereby the ruling class uses media, education, and other institutions to maintain its power. Marx’s predictions of a proletariat revolution had not come to fruition, he argued, because the working masses were caught up in those same capitalist values which suppressed them. In order to break free from this bourgeois influence, Gramsci called for a redefinition of social values – in essence, a “culture war.” (“Antonio Gramsci”)

I like to think that, if he lived today, Gramsci would have been a blogger. I could imagine him sitting at some Italian internet café fighting the culture war one keystroke at a time. In some ways, Gramsci’s Marxist fantasy has come true in our computer age. As Jay Rosen noted, one need only look at Ukraine’s recent history to see how the web can disrupt state power. It is no surprise that the internet poses such a threat to oppressive regimes; where anonymity meets an endless supply of information, freedom of expression is all that much easier to express.

But what about in America, where First Amendment laws have long been a part of our national identity? If we the people are fighting a culture war, then who exactly are our enemies? At some point not too long ago, corporations and Washington represented the cultural hegemony and the mass media was on our side. War reportage from Vietnam was perhaps the clearest example. But sometime around the early nineties the media came to be viewed as an arm of the corporate machine. Perhaps it was a reaction to Reagan’s talking head politics, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, or something else altogether, but American youth culture, Generation X, grew to distrust all things corporate. In music, art, even typeface (see Gary Hustwit), they demanded authenticity.

Yet if the Rupert Murdoch’s of the world had their media machine, Generation X soon found its own in the blogs, what Jay Rosen calls the “little First Amendment machines” (Rosen “The People…”). For a while, it was an Us versus Them binary, an underground “authentic” blogging to counter the supposedly manufactured reporting of professionals. In recent years, however, the media moguls have caught on to the success of blogging, both in terms of its popularity and its coverage. More than ever, the reader has become the writer, and a two-way conversation has begun to emerge. As Rosen notes, “bloggers vs. journalists is over” (Rosen “Bloggers…”); the debate has come to an end.

Or has it? The “little First Amendment machine” has its kinks like any other, and the benefits of blogging, a culture still in its infancy, are perhaps not so clear. Problems will arise whenever the alternative becomes mainstream (just look at break dancing or Avril Lavigne) and electronic journalism is no exception. This is an exciting time to be reading the news, but we must do so with a critical eye. The real problem is in finding and defining trustworthy reporting. And somewhere in this transition from top-down to bottom-up journalism, in this interregnum of old and new, the “morbid systems” appear.

The first problem is linked to the very freedom of speech that makes the internet possible in the first place. Given the First Amendment, there is no licensing process to become a journalist; anyone with a computer can publish online. However, this does not mean that everyone must do so. The web is not the intellectual wellspring that its founder made it out to be; in fact, the vast majority of online content is porn. For every Deep Throat there are thousands of Deep Throat’s, and that disproportion cannot be overemphasized. My point is not to rant on porn, but rather that finding the right online news source is more complicated than your regular visit to the newsstand. Consider the New York Times, for instance, a daily general interest paper whose editors and publishers decide what an educated person needs to know. Politics, stock quotes, even crosswords are included; the status of Britney’s crotch is not. The New York Times has barriers, a front and back page that contain within them “all the news that’s fit to print.” The internet, on the other hand, is borderless; any given website is linked to a vast network of other sources, some of which are bound to be unreliable. So while a Google search may gauge popularity, it overlooks authenticity.

With free speech also comes a tendency toward anonymity, which can be a blessing and a curse. Since this essay focuses on the latter, I will address the problems of bloggers who hide behind pseudonyms, who speak their minds without taking responsibility for those ideas. The blogosphere is full of these “trolls,” as they are called, hecklers with too much time on their hands. At best the trolls are annoying; at worst they can disrupt a productive discussion or even change policy. I once sat in on a meeting where a Brown administrator made reference to the Jolt, our on-campus discussion forum. It comes as no surprise that Deans read the Jolt. The frightening part is that they sometimes use the forum to gauge student opinion. In truth, some Jolt contributors do not even attend Brown, and those who do make up a vocal minority that seeks, more than anything else, to instigate controversy.

Anonymity also allows for plagiarism. With no top-down structure, no built-in system for fact-checking or cross-referencing, the internet is a hotbed for intellectual theft. This is only magnified by the fact that bloggers are not held accountable for plagiarism; with pseudo identities, there is no one to accuse. Professional journalism has had its fair share of unoriginal material in recent years, but the barriers to entry, and, more importantly, the byline holds reporters accountable for the words they write.

Finally, a newspaper is an institution with a physical building, traceable history, and material product sometimes dating back to the 19th century. The newspaper is tied to a community and mirrors that community. It is permanent and tangible, a primary source in the making. If I wanted to find out about violent crimes in 1950s St. Petersburg, Florida, then I would go to the archives of the St. Petersburg Times. Will blogs play this same role twenty or thirty years from now? Perhaps, but probably not to the same degree. Blogs are constantly evolving and changing; an entry can be revised or deleted, and a website can be shut down altogether. The electronic text simply does not have the same veracity as the printed word. Seeing is believing, and I think that, in the back of everyone’s mind, the internet or parts of the internet can still disappear.

From a Gramscian point of view, the internet is the best thing to happen since the printing press. It gives an uncensored, instant voice to the masses, an alternative to institutionalized media. Yet blogging is still in its early stages, and, as it becomes more accepted, the rules and expectation are bound to change. We are witnessing a point of transition, a revolution in the access of information and the ability to freely express our thoughts. Morbid symptoms are a part of any major transition; with time, perhaps these symptoms will cure themselves.

References:

“Antonio Gramsci.” Wikipedia.

Rosen, Jay. “Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over.” 2005. Pressthink.

Rosen, Jay. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” 2007. Pressthink.

Posted by Michael Schub at 10:41 PM | Permalink

Media forms, from their inception, are constantly debating between veracity and virtuality, between the representation of “truth” and the practice of storytelling. The practice of photography once thought of as an unfiltered representation of reality went about a radical break with the introduction of dark room manipulation. The way media was viewed went through a similar break when European philosophers like Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction between the sign or word and its signified. Such thinking exposed that it is the gap between the image and its signification where meaning is produced. Critical theories of media begin here and developed throughout the 20th century with technological advancements in media and further expansions in thought on media.

In our current global political arena as an information society saturated in media there is a much greater need for seriously thinking about current media forms. Inspired from John Phillip Santos lecture in the Global Media Seminar at Brown University on Wednesday, March 12, 2008, this essay will argue that in order to have any form of resistance in our current era of information culture, critical theory and practice of media must examine these chasms between reality and illusions, especially in how they differ from previous forms.

Media comforts a viewer, as she or he is allowed to be outside of oneself in front of a canvas, in a movie theater, or even browsing the web. This comfort as Guy Debord gives the spectacle in his famous book, The Society of Spectacle, is aligned with the passivity of viewership, the promise that the sole message of “a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned” is “What appears is good; what is good appears.” Due to the saturated and sheer numbers of images that strike us every day, we desire a moment of rest leaving us vulnerable to media’s force. Critical theory arose in order to fight this passive reception and investigate media’s power. The evolution of critical theory is a genealogy or evolution of human consciousness. Critical theory in other words is the understanding of how humans are manipulated by media’s modalities.

The evolution of media theory, which in essence is media itself, is a fairly recent story in the realm of history. The story begins with the emergence of photography in the 1800s. The work of William Fox Talbot and his predecessors created images that were considered “a pencil of nature.” The prevailing context of photography for 25 years was that the photographie represented reality. Even from the start of photography it was evident that the meaning of an image as a piece of evidence was complicated by the factors that shaped it: ownership, cultural settings, and viewing context. For instance Matthew Brady’s civil war pictures brought the battlefield to the public in a political context. Viewing the actual photograph was much powerful than the engraved newspaper image, but the same message came across and the public became image weary all the same.

By the 1880s, the illusion of reality was crushed when it became evident that manipulation in the darkroom was possible. Photography went in two directions. Some photographers took up the practice of storytelling in their photography. For instance one of the most famous hoax photographers was the writer and artist Lewis Carol and his fairies series. While others stayed dedicated to the practice of truth telling, this divide was also inherited in early cinema. The camp dominated by the Lumiere Brothers filmed a train arriving at the station, workers leaving the factory. While the work of Georges Melie created artifice with his film “A Trip to the Moon” (1902). Media began to create a space that constructed both reality and artifice for a viewer. The Lumiere Brothers’ film about a train arriving at a station made early cinematic viewers jumped out of their seats in fright of a reality that was too real. While at the same time, voyeuristic films for pleasure and the cult of stardom became extremely popular. The line between illusion and reality in society began to blur.

In the realm of philosophy similar advancements went on, most notably with the work of linguist philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure broke the notions of a unified sign and signified to reveal that not only are they separated but also there is a gap between the two that produces meaning. “Linguistics then works in the borderland where the elements of sound and thought combine; their combination produces a form, not a substance. ... The arbitrary nature of the sign explains why the social fact alone can create a linguistic system. The community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to usage and general acceptance are to be set up; by himself, the individual is incapable of fixing a single value.” This thought that meaning is socially constructed lead to media theory, which took as its aim the underlying issues that structure media. No longer was the issue of reality versus fiction, but how reality is turned into fiction and fiction into truth through media.

This field of discourse surrounding media brought to light importance issues that shaped media, most significantly temporality and ubiquity. The temporality of a photograph and film, a frozen moment or a moving past, complicates the space of time for a viewer. This issue becomes more pronounced with the introduction of live transmission, but media is instantaneously present from the moment of projection yet not immediately evident. The ubiquity of the medium was that anything, one, time, where was subject to its presentation in media. This unimaginable concept complicated the issue of surveillance and the creation of subjectivity in modern society.

In the 1920s at The Frankfurt School, a German school of neo-Marxist critical theory, a group of philosophers who had the impulse to theorize media emerged and developed the foundation of media theory. These theoreticians began to look at how culture is influenced by media and look into the deeper sources of social meaning. For instance one member, Siegfried Kracauer, developed the idea of the “mass ornament” in every day culture. The “mass ornament” was in ordinary places, especially urban, an antecedent to theories on mass culture. Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer progressed the concept that industrial processes were also a factor in constructing cultural meaning. The most famous forerunner for media theory, Walter Benjamin and his essay “ The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” developed the aesthetic side of culture in an industrial, mechanical age. His work, unlike his other colleagues, inspired strategies of resistance against the mechanized culture. As readers, thinkers, producers of media, one was an actor and poetic agent. The producer has the power to redefine and alter media rather than be a victim to the conforming system.

The institutional media systems, Hollywood and Network Television, developed throughout the 1900s and were rarely critiqued, especially in America. Resistant work and critique were silenced or non-existent. With technological advancement in media production and contemporaries of The Frankfurt School finally beginning to speak, independent media emerged by the 1960s. In the 1970s, Marshall McLuhan developed popular theories critiquing mainstream media, in particular television. His theory was that the proliferation of information flows was deeply complicated. On the technical side, handheld cameras became accessible and a “do-it-yourself” media production industry began to develop. Television, a medium that crystallized the American social dynamic, was one important place for such change. Politically and socially television held the most influence and access to the American public, particularly seen in the American presidency or historical moments caught on television. It was a space that allowed for short documentary series in news shows, for example CBS’s “CBS Reports.” The independent movement gained momentum with such broadcasting.

Another factor in this story was the globalization of subcultures. Mass media allowed for a globalized virtualization force or as Paul Virilio, in his essay “The Visual Crash,” warns us the seductive “globalization of the collective imagination.” The most famous example of globalized subcultures is the Rock n’ Roll media artifact, most notably seen in Beatlemania. The ubiquity of music makes it perfectly transmittable through various media modalities from the radio the television. As non-local connections set in with a single beckon of meaning, it was possible to connect non-local people. Media environments and ecologies began to take hold. With this came the understanding that an unfathomable number of global media environments existed and there could never be a single frame for the entire concept of media. This fact, supported by postmodern theories of subjectivity, made new forms of resistant media and critique necessary to create self-sustaining media apart from the conforming and generalizing mainstream media.

Baudrillard:
"This could be a strategy of the media, to offer spectacles that are more hollow and meaningless than reality – hyperreal in their stupidity and therein giving spectators a differential possibility of satisfaction…Somewhere, we carry the mourning of this naked reality, of this residual existence, of this total disillusion."

The globalized independent media movement took place in the 1980s, although its roots lay in the 60s and 70s. Its form was documentaries that worked to shape and redirect political culture. Video art also began to emerge at this time. This fusion of theory and media practice worked on how images produce meaning. The crucial year for this movement to be independent was when the UN took up the McBride Commission in 1980. This commission worked to create a global media equity program; the result was the “Many Voices One World” or McBride report. The 1990s gave way to documentary culture in a culturally remarkable way. A documentary vernacular was developed and amplified with increased broadcasting.

Documentary rhetoric’s and modalities shape meaning. Bill Nichols is famous for his modes of documentary, but inevitably a documentary will use various modes in order to create complex effects for the viewer. The most interesting forms of documentary are not the mainstream modes, but the forms that break away and alter those stereotypical forms. These forms of documentaries take theoretical backgrounds and speak to current conditions of subjectivity. For example when an elliptical form complicates the classic literary documentary, as seen in Chris Markers film “A Grin without a Cat” (1973), history is rethought and restructured for the viewer. Most recently, radical forms of documentary immerse the viewer in aesthetically arresting array of images and animations in order to reintegrate a sense of self in an environment saturated with images, see Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi Trilogy.

Presently we live in massive media environments. The globalized world has exciting possibilities for unprecedented creativity and invention as never seen before. However we must be cautioned. Lev Manovich writes that we must think of the “trajectories through the space of cultural history that would pass through new media, thus grounding it in what came before” in order to come to terms with current media. As media producers we need an understanding of what has come before as all culture and history has passed through media modalities. To return to the point that meaning is in the chasm between veracity and virtuality, I will turn to Baudrillard in his famous book from 1993, “The Precession of Simulacra”:

"We are no longer in the society of spectacle, of which the situationists spoke, nor in the specific kinds of alienation and repression that it implied. The medium itself no longer identifiable as such, and the confusion of the medium and the message (McLuhan) is the first great formula of this new era. There is no longer a medium in the literal sense: it is now intangible, diffused, and diffracted in the real, and one can no longer even say that the medium is altered by it."

In our controlled society constantly under surveillance the point is not to draw the line between reality and illusion, but to understand how that line has been blurred. Virilio fears that we will reach a “visual crash” where the disinformation of capitalism will become the truth that we comfortably believe, this warning may be a reality now. Resistance is found by creating a space between the capitalist virtual stories and conceptions of raw reality, a space where the apparatus is exposed. In an age of great possibility, the task is ever more complicated.

Continue reading "Veracity and Virtuality in an Age of Visual Crash: Extra Credit Thematic Essay" »

Posted by Megan Goetsch at 09:18 AM | Permalink

(*extra credit* Thematic Essay)

“We also have to work through... the dark side… it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective” – Vice President Dick Cheney to Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,” 2001

“We didn't bring this crisis on ourselves, but we'll be the ones to settle it. This is a dirty business and we have to get our hands dirty to clean it up!” – President Wayne Palmer, 24

“War is cinema and cinema is war.” – Paul Virilio, War and Cinema, 1989

Although the leap to Paul Virilio’s understanding that “war is cinema and cinema is war” takes some time to fully comprehend, what is fairly transparent is the long historical relationship between war and cinema. Cinematographic technology flourished during WWI, as the lens of reconnaissance blurred sight for soldier and civilian, but crystallized it for the military strategist. War and cinema share the same technologies (telescopic lenses, freeze frames, virtual reality, point-and-shoot), mutually inspire each other’s narratives (WWII accounts Saving Private Ryan and Triumph of the Will), and, in turn, construct the realities of their audiences. While this essay will not address Virilio’s second declaration that cinema is war, it will explore Virilio’s assertion that “war is cinema” and, in doing so, answer the question – is war inherently cinematic? To do so in a comprehensible way, I will give a brief note on the necessity of speed and, then, examine the centrality of the constructed narrative in war and cinema. Lastly, to round out the understanding of how war is cinematic, this essay will comment on the participation of both war and cinema in the derealization of reality.

Speed, Virilio contends, is the essence of war. According to Virilio, with the advent of new technologies, war takes place in time, not geography. Instead of bringing us closer to experiencing far-away places and people, the goal of new technology is to move us ever farther away from the other, into a re-imagined reality. Just as war does, cinema also takes place in time, as the primary commitment we make to experience it is time-sensitive, not place-sensitive, and as space disappears in the cinema when scenes are flattened onto a screen. After making the time commitment, without moving we are transported quickly in our railway-car styled theater through 1-dimensional celluloid topography. Fittingly, “cinematic” functions occasionally as a form of “kinematic,” and kinematics, or, as it used to be called, cinematics, the name originating from the French cinématique, which is the geometry of motion (“Cinematic”). Cinema simulates the feelings of movement, speed, and immediacy, creating, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it, an imposture of immediacy. Cinema also requires the acceleration of time to condense a story into a digestible segment – Six Days of the Condor becomes just three. Thus, both cinema and war share a sense of the primacy of speed.

The struggle between good and evil is another ever-present part of war. For this reason, Virilio writes: “War can never break free from the magical spectacle because its very purpose it to produce that spectacle: to fell the enemy is not so much to capture as to ‘captivate’ him, to instill the fear of death before he actually dies” (Virilio 5). The war story locates every participant within it, as all become part of and are awed by its immensity. The most obvious case of this creative function of war is the construction of the hero-villain paradigm.

First, let’s take the hero. An excellent example of the relationship between war and cinema and hero construction is the Army Strong US Army Campaign. According to the Army Strong Fact Sheet, which features the clean and bold Arial font, the campaign started in November 2006 in an effort to re-invigorate recruitment. See an example of the Army Strong clip here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hosiAsy8dhA

As described on the US Army Strategic Communications, Marketing and Outreach website the campaign “captures the unique brand of strength found in the U.S. Army Soldier” and “the voice of the U.S. Army Soldier” (Strategic Outreach Directorate, US Army Accessions). In this way, the individual is presented as the collective and becomes a marketable brand. Even though the linked add favors a crescendo of rousing trumpets and clashing cymbals to the “unique voice” of these individuals, its producers emphasize the truthfulness and authenticity of their representation of reality. As one of the fact sheets explains, actual soldiers were used in the ads since: “No actor could ever authentically convey the power and intensity of an Army Strong Soldier. That’s why every Soldier portrayed in the new Army Strong advertising campaign is an actual U.S. Army Soldier” (Strategic Outreach Directorate, US Army Accessions). This suggests that soldiers are never actors, actors are never truthful, and that only by joining the Army will one be able to create the Army Strong character.

Yet, is anyone represented as his or her “true” self when artfully lit by a setting sun or climbing to a soundtrack of heralding trumpets? While the producers apparently wanted authenticity in regards to the soldiers featured in the ad, that old Hollywood magic was used proudly to sell the Army Strong brand, again reaffirming the relationship between Hollywood and war. The director for the ads was Samuel Bayer, who is well-known for producing numerous award-winning videos for the likes of Green Day, The Rolling Stones, and Aerosmith, and his work on campaigns for Nike, Coke, Pepsi, Lexus, and Mountain Dew (Strategic Outreach Directorate, US Army Accessions). The composer is Mark Isham, a top Hollywood film composer who has produced scores for many notable films, such as Eight Below, Running Scared, Crash, and Men of Honor (Strategic Outreach Directorate, US Army Accessions). Thus, with Bayer and Isham’s help, the army creates the identity of the Army Strong hero-soldier, with just a touch of Hollywood glamour. As noted by John Whiteclay Chambers II and David Culbert in the introduction to a 1994 issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, “Pierre Sorlin reminds us, movies [or in our case commercials] are images, derivative perspectives on the world, that are marketed for profit” (Chambers II 353). The profit to be had here is augmented recruitment numbers and a national identification of soldiers as heroes, crucial to morale during war.

The construction (or is it obstruction?) of the opponent’s identity is another critical element of the war story. For the viewer at home, and for that matter the soldier on the field, the enemy is presented as obscure and unidentifiable, nothing like us, especially in the War on Terror. He/she/it morphs into an evil villain shrouded in a mist of anti-freedom and anti-American sentiment, characterized by the grizzled fonts that shout “TERROR TARGET” on CNN headline news. This distance between the villain and hero, which facilitates their alienation, is upheld “through [war’s] hyper-generation of movement, mixing the accomplishments of the means of destruction and the means of communicating destruction” (Virilio 24). By doing so, “war falsifies appearance by falsifying distance” (Virilio 24). This cancellation of time and space during war, as described by Virilio, is just like Albert Gace’s definition of cinema, which finds it “magical, spell-binding, capable of giving to the audience, in every fraction of a second, that strange sensation of four-dimensional omnipresence canceling time and space” (Gace in Virilio 26). War, like cinema, alienates us from the enemy, and holds us spell-bound in its fear-driven, cinematic, and oh-so-climactic fable of us vs. them. The beginning of a newsreel on Osama bin Laden from CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360˚, featuring thumping ominous music that signals the segment will be another part of the war story, does just that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoGFPLeCFM. It’s interesting that the networks feel the need to characterize war news with scary music and flashy graphics. Perhaps they think we wouldn’t know whom to hate, otherwise.

The images and sounds of war news create cinematic suspense not just because of their theatrical quality, but also because war is actually highly suspenseful, as a result of the omnipresent shadow of uncertainty that follows it around. At this point, for instance, no one knows what will happen in Iraq or Afghanistan, when troops will leave, or if/when there will be another attack on the United States. While it is becoming clearer what exactly the CIA did during interrogation of suspected terrorists and what the Bush Administration’s role was in sanctioning torture, the haze is just lifting. This story in particular is so rife with the elements of a thriller that it is no surprise that VP Cheney’s “dark side” served as inspiration to President Wayne Palmer’s “dirty hands” on 24, one of the most popular thrillers on television. The uncertainty of wartime thus lends itself well to suspense, which translates seamlessly into cinema.

In addition to having the cinematic elements of a compelling narrative and suspenseful mood, war is also inherently cinematic as it participates in the same kind of derealization of reality as cinema. For soldiers, for example, seeing is done through virtual reality, as it is a mechanical eye that reinterprets the outside world into flickering green dots on a screen. As James Der Derian has noted, the proliferation of simulation in military training has led to the inability of some soldiers to think outside of the simulations, rendering them unable to adapt to “actual” reality when it changes something on the screen. This dependency on simulation has led to some serious mistakes, like the destruction of an Iranian commercial airliner cruising over the Gulf. Virilio describes the effect of refracted sight on the soldier, noting: “As sight lost its direct quality and reeled out of phase, the soldier had the feeling of being not so much destroyed as derealized or dematerialized, any sensory point of reference suddenly vanishing in a surfeit of optical targets” (Virilio 15). Virilio adds: “The soldier’s panic-stricken distancing from static warfare is transferred to the technology of lightning-war, to the telescopic lenses and the stereoscopic glass of military photo-analysis, in a medium which seems aqueous, glass-like, with all its phenomena of refraction and diffraction” (Virilio 74). The technology and methods of war, thus, create a new space in which the soldier’s very existence is called into question, as all sensory input enters the thought through viscous, distorting lenses. Cinema, in a similar way, provides distance from reality, while constituting a new space of existence.

The consequence of this derealization (and this is where we close the loop) is a desire for a rematerialization of images, motion, and story – a cinematic interpretation of reality. So, not only does war lend itself to cinema, it requires the use of cinematic methods to construct its own version of reality in which it can thrive. War must construct this reality through a sustained, identity shaping narrative, in the small confines of the closed cockpit, the war bunker, or the submarine, so that war continues and all of its participants know what they are, or maybe more importantly what they are not. While this has failed at times, as is clear from the various interviews conducted with Iraq War veterans that attest to their feelings of a lack of purpose and their insight into the non-heroic aspects of the soldier’s life, the narrative of war has at least proven sustainable enough that the US is still at war with Iraq.

War requires a narrative if it is to survive – what else would keep soldiers from running away from the bullets and a populace from allowing clear violations of its precious civil liberties than the belief in the war narrative of honor, brotherhood, and good vs. evil? Without the narrative, death is denied its heroic overtures, villains look like ordinary people, and the measured suspense we are fed through news media could give way to panic and paranoia by tainting the war’s sense of purpose. War needs cinematic interpretation, a story, for all those who witness it to attempt to understand its horrors and tragedies. If one is not readily available, as it was during WWII, then one must be constructed.

Virilio remarks that crew from members of the aircraft carrier Nimitz told a journalist from Libération: “Our work is totally unreal. Every now and then, fiction and reality should get together and prove once and for all that we really are here” (Virilio 66). The soldiers want a reintegration of the cinematic elements and reality of war to reaffirm they are there, to reaffirm their existence, and to reaffirm who they are. This is perhaps the essential purpose of the war narrative, as without being convinced one is on the side of good, that one is in his or her own right a hero in the American story, it seems there would be little incentive to continue witnessing the suffering and death endemic to war. War is not beautiful and while the Army Strong soldiers are surely brave and strong, they still cry when they get hurt and they do return in coffins. It is screaming one hears, not the crescendo of trumpets.

Perhaps society is so comfortable with this war narrative because to face “actual” reality, without the ornamentation of an epic struggle or a non-human enemy, would be too difficult. Maybe we need the mood lighting and suspense to refract the reality of war so that we can feel at ease with our national identity that has, for the last few years especially, been suffused with war. Hitler realized the importance of creating these alternative conceptions of self and reality during wartime, noting that people needed to forget about the suffering of war and instead be pacified into a comfortable, unquestioning state of existence, in which their subconscious, influenced by Hitler’s propaganda, drove their identities. Goebbels noted that the regime needed a mechanism to make the German people a mass of common visionaries “obeying a law they did not even know but which they could recite in their dreams” (Goebbels 1931 in Virilio 54). Thus, war needs cinema, and cinema is essentially a stylized and constructed narrative. This narrative influences our collective identity, and that identity allows us to breathe in the sanitized and composed space of refracted reality.

Works Cited/Consulted

Army Strong. Dir. Samuel Bayer. Perf. US Army Soldiers. 2006. YouTube. 10 Mar. 2008 .

Chambers II, John Whiteclay and Culbert, David (1994) "Introduction." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 14:4, 353-356.

Cheney, Dick. Interview with Tim Russert. 2001. 11 Mar. 2008 .

“Cinematic.” Oxford English Dictionary. 10 Mar. 2008 .

CNN: LATEST OSAMA BIN LADEN TAPE. Dir. CNN. Perf. Soledad O'Brien, Osama bin Laden, and Paul Cruickshank. 2007. YouTube. 10 Mar. 2008 .

"Memorable Quotes for 24." IMBD. 2008. 11 Mar. 2008 .

Strategic Outreach Directorate, US Army Accessions. “United States Army Accessions Command: G7- Strategic Communications, Marketing and Outreach.” US Army. 11 Mar. 2008 .

Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: the Logistics of Perception. London: Verso, 1989.

Posted by Amy M. L. Tan at 11:32 PM | Permalink

*Extra Credit* Thematic Essay

During World War I, film was introduced as part of the strategic war-waging mechanism to capture a bird’s eye view of the enemy. That niche evolved in the Second World and Cold wars when film became fodder for the propaganda machine, and, hot or cold, war was the popular dynamic between clashing ideologies. More recently, film has exported the experience of war beyond the real-time audience of boots on the ground. By making the human carnage of the Gulf and Iraq wars (as well as of humanitarian crises) visible (read: “real”) to an otherwise uninvolved public, and given an international community struggling to substantiate the lip service it pays to international law and assumptions of human dignity, film has turned the idea of “cinema as war fodder” on its head and made the declaration of war in fact less viable. Whether used to inflame or arrest public support for military intervention on behalf of nationalism, capitalism, “freedom”, or [insert your favorite call to arms here], for both its sensory appeal and elucidation of human tragedy, filmic representations of war make for good cinema.

As described by the French director Abel Gance, cinema is unique for its ability to give the audience “that strange sensation…of cancelled time and space.” Because war is already ingrained in the cultural logic of men, when used to portray the “facts” of a war story such a temporal vacuum easily absorbs the audience. Barthes adds to this the idea of the studium of war, its “application to a thing, a taste for someone…[participation] in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions.” Great cinema magnifies real human truths: just as comedians are funny when they reflect real-life frustrations (See Ellen Degeneres on mechanized toilet flushing), and drama is sad when the tragedy is relatable, so too is war universally feared (or, if not, then respected) for its wake of human destruction. Everyone can relate to something in that; everyone knows or at the least can understand the humanity in a war film, the frequent ambiguity of good and evil, and the extenuating circumstances and cultural logics that prevent absolute distinctions. The sensory and emotional appeal of war is such that every individual is drawn into the proverbial bigger picture, regardless of spatial or temporal displacement.

Good cinema is emotive and “travel[s] straight to the hearts of audiences” through a conduit of individuals: it is through the vicarious experience of characters that the experience of war is internalized. Film viewing can be likened to a hallucination in which the screen acts as “point of passage,” transporting the audience to someone else’s time and place. The sensory overload of war is sufficient in its own right for the purposes of historical transportation; what defines “war” as a cinematic genre, however, is the handling of truth through individual suffering without the expense of macro-world depth. As Peter Almond explained, in film stories, it helps not only to have dramatic characters in dramatic situations that determine their direction in the story and make the story compelling, but that there must also be a strong, familiar premise (e.g. war). The war backdrop presents the audience with the inherent absurdity and depravity of war. As such, its continued representation through a medium of recognizable characters may contribute to its obsolescence (a new angle on the democratic peace theory).

War is cinematic because the micro-level storyline allows for unpredictability, despite the known outcome of an historical event. The characters that carry the film against the backdrop of epochal issues are the instruments of suspense, such that a script must be character-oriented, thereby attaching the audience to their fate, when that of the world has long-been decided.

“War is cinema and cinema is war,” says Paul Virilio. Without experience in the film industry, it’s difficult to back up that latter statement, but the first assertion speaks to the fact that society often tries to make sense of reality, of tragedy, loss and the gamut of human emotion in a cinematic way: that is, by presenting them via the experience of believable film characters, proxies for real world people.

In his efforts to bring well-known historical events (and non-events) to life, Koji Masutani used several stylistic tools: augmenting the background noise at President Kennedy’s press conferences such that those scenes completely filled Joukowsky as if it were Kennedy’s own stage; trapping modern footage in black and white such that the passage of thirty years was blunted; and using as few filters as possible, thereby allowing Kennedy to speak for himself. Without the juxtaposition of modern-day interviews with Kennedy’s contemporaries, the audience saw Kennedy not as a historical figure but as someone speaking to them about carrots and sticks.

The premise of Kennedy’s ability to avoid recourse to violence against the Red Threat in Cuba and Vietnam, while interesting of itself, is already known to “Thirteen Days” and “Virtual JFK” audiences. What makes the threat – and, in other cases, practice – of war cinematic, is the careful character development against the larger premise and alongside a powerful musical score such that the viewer is transported into the storyline and lives the anxiety and absurdity of war. Assuming a world of rational actors for whom human suffering is, at best, distasteful, continuing to bring war into the cinematic realm may increase the pressure for nonviolent resolutions to transnational conflict.

My lease on this idealism expires in May; let me enjoy it until then.

Posted by Kathleen Fleming at 12:36 PM | Permalink

Toward the end of the Second World War, a race began. Mistrust that had been brewing beneath the surface bubbled over as the Soviet and Western armies chased the prize: Berlin. In the years that followed, as the smoke from the battlefields dissipated, a chill settled over the great powers and split most of world into two spheres. Whispers and murmurs of suspicions and secrets replaced the din of artillery. From a distance, the Soviets and the Americans observed each other. From what little they saw or knew, they began to speculate about one another, to create their own images of the “other,” the enemy. In this way, the media became the primary architect of the Cold War narrative in the United States.

This narrative was constantly evolving, as understandings of the conflict, the enemy, and the collective “we” took on new meaning. In the form of advertisements, newscasts, and films, information blended with propaganda; the narrative fed back into the reality, framing the way in which people perceived one another and shaping their interactions. The media was both an instrument and an independent actor in the Cold War. It created a pseudo reality that, in the end, may have collapsed upon itself by virtue of its speed, outpacing the capacity of the public to adapt; after forty years, people grew tired of it. As Arno and Dissanayake comment, “Intercultural awareness has lagged behind the means of communication” (Arno and Dissanayake, 13). When it all began, the enemy was simple, concrete, distinct, and identifiable. By the end, the enemy was amorphous: anyone or no one. Who could tell anymore?

Propaganda came into prominence as a wartime tool in the United States during WWII. Racialized portrayals of the Japanese as twisted, heartless animals sought to remove them from the sphere of humanity and make it easier for the troops to conceptualize and kill the enemy without remorse. The Germans received different treatment, as the propaganda often distinguished between “good” Germans and evil Nazis. Propaganda galvanized the war effort by glorifying the strength of the American way and presenting the war as a zero-sum conflict. The media’s message was one of dire urgency; we had to confront the enemy or risk losing our American liberty. The conflict was framed ideologically; our liberty became that of the world as we faced off against the forces of tyranny. The enemy had attacked us and was therefore one we could not coexist with.

Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, the American media had looked upon Russia with mistrust. When the Soviet Union became an ally against Nazi Germany, the mood somewhat shifted to portray them as such, yet the underlying perceptions remained. The film Ninotchka (1939) contrasted the communist life with Western life from the perspective of a Soviet woman sent on business to Paris. She is overwhelmed by the splendor of the city and tempted to stay when she finds love. Her experience in the West is contrasted with that back home, where life is more difficult and individuality is unfamiliar. This film starkly sets the Soviet Union apart from the West as a stifling and backward land. Unsurprisingly, the West claims her and grants her love in the end. This early/pre-Cold War film does not present the Soviets as an enemy per se, but rather as the “other.” Their system is inferior and artificially imposed upon the people. They are confused, but once they have experienced Western life, who could go back? There is confidence that the West will win them over.

When the Cold War fully got under way, however, the relationship turned to one of rivalry in which each side feared falling behind the other. Both powers endeavored to position themselves to better their images while entrenching themselves within their particular spheres. In this phase of the Cold War, the concern arose that if the United States did not actively “win over” other states, then they would fall to the Soviets. America had to show the superiority of its capabilities and ideology. Its capabilities came in the form of military, economic, and cultural strength. Its ideology was one of morality, individual liberty, and equality (if only in theory). These “pure” American characteristics were set against those of the Soviet Union.

Hollywood aided in espousing these characteristics with The Ten Commandments (1956). Though set in a time thousands of years before the founding of either state, some have argued that this film allegorically portrays the ideological differences between the Soviet Union and the United States (Shaw), with the Egyptians representing Soviets and the Hebrews representing Americans. The Americans are the chosen people of God, who through their persistence, virtue, and faith overcome their oppressors. All they desire is to live freely. The Soviets are powerful yet misguided, placing their faith in false gods who fail to guide and protect them. They are cruel and take advantage of those whom they have enslaved. The film grants religious and moral authority to the allegorical Americans. At the same time, it strips the allegorical Soviets of their artificial authority. America is destined to prevail while the Soviet Union is destined to crumble. In this film, the Soviet Union is portrayed as a more direct threat to Western civilization, actively suppressing liberty and with no regard for humanity. By enhancing the identity of the enemy, it made the Soviet Union all the more important for the United States. The greater you make or perceive your enemy, the more your enemy comes to define you. By raising up the Soviets as such a profound threat, America bound itself ever tighter to them.

Some have argued that the media fueled and perpetuated the Cold War while others have credited it for helping to bring down the Soviet Union (Arno and Dissanayake). Both arguments offer interesting insights into the media dynamic of the Cold War. By creating a villain, you inherently create a hero. In this unity of opposition, both sides mutually reinforce each other, and by doing so constitute each other. One of the reasons that the Cold War was so “stable” was that at a certain level, both superpowers realized that they needed one another. As the portrayed villain became greater, so did the portrayed hero. The media elevated both sides to a hyper real plane, which gave the Soviet Union and the United States, in one form or another, power. This self-reinforcing thrust of the media likely promoted the vitality of the Cold War.

Nonetheless, the characteristic thrust of consumerism by the media may have simultaneously contributed to the downfall of the Soviet system. Tony Shaw posits, “The Cold War was won as much in the shopping basket as at the negotiating table” (Shaw, 33). Not only was media intended for consumption itself, but also it pictured and promoted American goods to those around the world. By flaunting capitalist luxury, the media indirectly compared the bounty in the West to the dearth in the East. Such a disparity in the quality of life could not endure, because you cannot wall in your own deprived people and expect them to loyally submit forever. In this light, the dissolution of the Soviet Union resembles Moses leading his people out of Egypt, with the Pharaoh powerless to stop him, just like Moscow was unable to suppress the social movements in its satellite states in the late 1980s. In these ways, the media maintained the Cold War and yet constantly chipped away at the enemy.

Eventually the enemy grew so great and complex that it became more than itself. The enemy ceased to have concrete meaning anymore and became more of an idea creeping around in American social consciousness. In Three Days of the Condor (1975), a book reader for the CIA thinks that his section has been taken out by some enemy force. When he tries to bring himself in, he is attacked by his superior and escapes. He soon discovers that the enemy is not a hostile, foreign group, but rather one of their own. This enemy was created by the hyper reality in which the intelligence community operates. In this film, the Soviets are no longer the enemy; we are our own enemies. This is what happens when the rivalry and conflict are taken too far and are played out for too long. This is what happens when surveillance and simulation are coupled with the accelerating speed of technology and interactions; reality cannot keep up and is enveloped by the hyper reality. Arno and Dissanayake put it this way: “Mass media began to mediate government-citizen communication. People became alienated from one another as cultures moved inexorably from association (Gemeinschaft) into abstraction (Gesellschaft)” (Arno and Dissanayake, 30). As the pace of media, technology, and information accelerates and people move farther away from each other into abstraction, will we become so ensnared in the hyper reality that the only enemy we can find is ourselves?

Works Cited/Consulted:

Arno, Andrew and Wimal Dissanayake, Ed. The News Media in National and International Conflict. Westview Press, Inc., Boulder, Colorado, 1984.

Chilton, Paul, Ed. Language and the Nuclear Arms Debate: Nukespeak Today. Frances Pinter Publishers, Dover, New Hampshsire, 1985.

Clayton, Koppes R. and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1990.

Der Derian, James. “The (S)pace of International Relations: Simulation, Surveillance, and Speed.” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3, Special Issue: Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissidence in International Studies. (Sep., 1990), pp. 295-310.

Shaw, Tony. Hollywood’s Cold War. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, Massachusetts, 2007.

Three Days of the Condor. Produced by Stanley Schneider and Dino De Laurentiis. Directed by Sydney Pollack. Paramount Pictures. 1975.

Posted by Alan Johnson at 11:11 AM | Permalink

Willem Van Lancker - Thematic Essay

Massimo Vignelli called graphic design, and more specifically what graphic designers do, “a fight against ugliness.” He likened it to a doctor battling disease; designers are working to cure the visual disease that infests our surroundings and environment (Helvetica Hustwit). It is true that typography, and on a broader scale, graphic design, affect our response and communication to and with our world subconsciously every day. “Design is solving problems. Graphic design is solving problems by making marks. Type is a uniquely rich set of marks because it makes language visible” (A Type Primer, Kane viii).

So, since typography and graphic design make language visible what dictates how we respond to it? In other words, do we choose fonts, or do fonts choose us? Just as Gary Hustwit provided us with the anecdote of seeing the word “welfare” set in his grungy “punk-rock” font on CNN; seeing words depicted in some qualitative visual manner very often influences and even changes their meaning. The viewer instantly associates the word welfare with something dirty, wretched and negative. However, if the same text were set in a clean, modern font, the viewer’s reaction to the topic could easily be completely the opposite. This phenomenon is very apparent and obvious for some fonts and design elements. For example, if I were to use a rounded, bubbly font such as Comic Sans, the viewer would likely associate the text with fun, children, and light-hearted content. Furthermore, many fonts, though they do not fundamentally imply a certain quality or aesthetic, have become such a part of our mass-culture that they are instantly recognizable or identifiable with a particular message or an unmistakable image. Think of the Coca-Cola script; if you were to see that font forming any other word it is likely you would still think of Coke. At the same time, there are fonts like Helvetica that mean absolutely nothing at all when viewed singularly and objectively, but which can take on such a different character depending upon how they are juxtaposed, that they become the most important font families of all. It is this insidious, subconscious power that typography wields over the population that makes it so interesting. Graphic design allows us to communicate with each other but it also has the power to subliminally dictate our actions every day.

This is definitely not a modern phenomenon, as many would assume. Long before the proliferation of movable type with the invention of Gutenburg’s printing press (circa 1493), fonts have existed and been identified as products and representations of certain cultures, religions, languages and regions. These hand-carved and hand-written fonts have withstood the centuries and are now found on nearly everyone’s personal computer. Fonts like Times, Trajan, and many of the transitional serif fonts, all are rooted in ancient Rome and more specifically, transcribed from the Trajan Column (circa 114 A.D.), believed to be one of the finest examples of truly “Roman type.” The writing styles of the characters in the illuminated manuscripts can be seen on nearly every Irish pub in America, (A Short History of the Printed Word Chappell, Bringhurst). Even then, there was a sort of association by font that people adhered to, each locale having its own way of carving and designing letters.

When the printing press arrived on the typographic scene at the end of the 15th century, fonts and typography in Europe were primarily controlled by the Catholic Church. To differentiate their type style from the Catholic printings, Protestant Dutch monks designed their own letterforms that they carried on their backs to avoid persecution from the Diocese while still spreading their message, (Graphic Design: A Concise History, Hollis 68). So here we have the Protestant people or the clergy at least, attempting to identify and separate themselves as a group in part by using type. The fonts they created eventually led to the common fonts, Caslon, Baskerville, and other modern English fonts. This is where most people get lost in the slight differences between fonts, things like the subtle nuances between Adobe Garamond and Garamond Premier Pro or even greater differences like those between Verdana and Univers. The layperson sees the Target logo and the logo for American Airlines as two entirely different fonts and designs. All the while, it is in fact a careful ruse, a manipulation of the tools and devices that are at a graphic designer’s disposal (and I do not mean the computer). Devices such as leading - the amount of vertical spacing between lines of type, kerning - the adjustment of letter spacing in a proportional sense, and tracking - the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in text, color, and weight, are just a few that have allowed fonts like Helvetica to take on so many disparate forms and connotations.

Helvetica, with its rigid conformity was born out of the modernist world. The Twentieth century led to the rise of modernism in graphic design as well. The Modernist school of thought was born out of the Bauhaus in Germany as well as the Swiss style of typography. It relied on the simple tenet that less is more. Modernist designers worked out of grids, using strong contrast, and only a few fonts. Years later, during the cultural revolution of the sixties and seventies, design entered the post-modern stage in its development. All of the rules that designers had previously adhered to were often discarded in favor of “humanistic fonts” and hand-drawn designs that often were born out of mistakes in an artist’s work. This period stood in strong defiance to the order and structure of the modernist discipline. Helvetica survived this era as well.

I do not want this to become an essay on the development of typography, so here I will break from my historical and technical recap. Today, in the digital era of typography where virtually no one in the trade physically creates their designs in metal type any longer, the ease of creating type and being a “graphic designer” has become as simple as buying a mac with the latest version of the Adobe Creative Suite. In reality, being an effective graphic designer, the doctor of visual maladies and communication, takes so much more. It does not necessarily only take a degree in the discipline to make a good graphic designer. Instead, a good designer must be an artist, as well as a student of human communication and a keen observer of how people interact with each other and react to their environment. As we have entered the D.I.Y. (do it yourself) generation for nearly every aspect of life, this has led to a proliferation of unsuccessful fonts (just go to 1001fonts.com, fontfreak.com, etc to see for yourself) and uninspiring amateur graphic design.

Though we are living in a state of nearly total media saturation, graphic design still retains its fundamental influence over us, contrary to the idea that if something is such a part of our culture it becomes ubiquitous and invisible. It is entirely duplicitous and insidious in our world - on the Internet, television, the printed word and in our surroundings. However, even though we are bombarded by advertisements every second of every day, we are not immune to their power. We still recognize the giant, iconic Texaco sign as a place to stop for gas and not just a word set in Helvetica Bold.

This argument takes me back to the question that prompted this essay to begin with; do we choose the fonts or do the fonts choose us? I think that it is a combination of both. When someone sets out to find a font that expresses exactly what he or she is looking for, they fall back on the conventions that have been set by our society (i.e. trying to find the perfect font for a new sushi restaurant, nine times out of ten he or she will select the typical “ninja/Asian” style font that everyone is familiar and identifies with). So in this sense, the fonts are choosing us but at the same time this is merely a reflection of the stereotypes and norms that the globally mediated society has created. It is the groundbreaking designs in figure-ground relationships and the balance of form and counter-form that shake the foundations of these trite stereotypical communicators. This is why Helvetica has become the ubiquitous behemoth in the world of typography for the past fifty years. Paula Scher gav