A Sunday morning curiosity: Marlon Brando and Medium Theory in 1953?
Hullo AoIRists, I recently looked more closely at the Marlon Brando movie, "The Wild One" (1953) (the source of a long-favored response to the question, "What are you rebelling against?" (Brando) "What-a-ya got?") About 20 minutes into the film there is, by my lights, a rather remarkable exchange between the (remarkably well-behaved) bikers and the ancient bar-keeper Jimmy. They are asking "what do you hicks do around here?", and in the course of his response, Jimmy makes a couple of interesting media pronouncements: == Jimmy: I mind my own business. Listen to the radio uh, music that is. News is no good. It excites people. (biker): Hey Jim what about TV? You like TV? Jimmy: What? (biker): That new thing, Jim. Television. Jimmy: Oh, pictures. No, no pictures. Everything these days is pictures. Pictures and a lot of noise. Nobody even knows how to talk. They just grunt at each other. == This seems a striking expression - somewhat ironic as it appears within a film as another "picture" medium - of a kind of "medium panic" (my term, I think), i.e., in parallel with "moral panic," but in this case the fear that a new medium will totally displace older ones, including speech itself. (Parallels with some contemporary critiques and concerns about more recent media are also nicely obvious.) At the risk of revealing (yet once again) my vast ignorance - if only as a historical curiosity - though perhaps now nicely illustrated in this little example - does anyone have an idea, suggestion, vague hunch, etc. - A) where might this "medium panic" have derived from, reflected in the larger culture, etc. Especially vis-a-vis B) any prevailing theories or views on communication and media at the time of the film that would have either supported or critique Jimmy's concern about picture media? Many thanks in advance, - charles ess Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/> University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no
Charles, I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with film/TV theory (at least not anymore) to answer the 2nd question. But as to the first, maybe this was a dig by the screenwriter(s) at the emerging medium of TV? At the time TV was drawing audiences away from the movie theaters and people in the movie business weren't sure films would survive. Maybe this bit of dialogue expressed that anxiety in the film industry, perhaps tinged with some disdain for it from people who may have ended up working there eventually out of necessity. It's not unusual for writers to throw self-referential material into scrips…e,g, the Simpsons writers' many many digs at Harvard and the other Ivies, the Sopranos' 'Christopher' episode that made fun of criticism the show received for its portrayal of Italian-Americans, or the 'D-Girl' episode, Seinfeld's whole 'Jerry' TV pilot story arc, etc. I dunno who often screenwriters in the 50s did this, but I'll bet they did more often than many realized at the time. Luis - - - - - Luis E. Hestres Ph.D. candidate | School of Communication | American University More about me at luishestres.com (http://luishestres.com/) or LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hestres) | Follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/luishestres/) | Visit my SSRN Author page (http://ssrn.com/author=1820222) "Theoretical critiques are like sociopaths: Their aggressive drives are rarely balanced by constructive instincts." -- From "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory" by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Sociological Forum 14(1), 1999 On Sunday, August 25, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Charles Ess wrote:
Hullo AoIRists,
I recently looked more closely at the Marlon Brando movie, "The Wild One" (1953) (the source of a long-favored response to the question, "What are you rebelling against?" (Brando) "What-a-ya got?")
About 20 minutes into the film there is, by my lights, a rather remarkable exchange between the (remarkably well-behaved) bikers and the ancient bar-keeper Jimmy. They are asking "what do you hicks do around here?", and in the course of his response, Jimmy makes a couple of interesting media pronouncements: == Jimmy: I mind my own business. Listen to the radio uh, music that is. News is no good. It excites people.
(biker): Hey Jim what about TV? You like TV?
Jimmy: What?
(biker): That new thing, Jim. Television.
Jimmy: Oh, pictures. No, no pictures. Everything these days is pictures. Pictures and a lot of noise. Nobody even knows how to talk. They just grunt at each other. ==
This seems a striking expression - somewhat ironic as it appears within a film as another "picture" medium - of a kind of "medium panic" (my term, I think), i.e., in parallel with "moral panic," but in this case the fear that a new medium will totally displace older ones, including speech itself.
(Parallels with some contemporary critiques and concerns about more recent media are also nicely obvious.)
At the risk of revealing (yet once again) my vast ignorance - if only as a historical curiosity - though perhaps now nicely illustrated in this little example - does anyone have an idea, suggestion, vague hunch, etc. - A) where might this "medium panic" have derived from, reflected in the larger culture, etc. Especially vis-a-vis B) any prevailing theories or views on communication and media at the time of the film that would have either supported or critique Jimmy's concern about picture media?
Many thanks in advance, - charles ess
Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication
Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no (mailto:charles.ess@media.uio.no)
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Hi The earliest 'medium-panic' that I can note is in a Socratic dialogue called the Phaedeus - a lament of the loss of dialogue between writer/author once ideas are codified and 'fixed' on a page that can be disseminated and appear in a context-less space without the benefit of directly interrogating the originator of a thought. Socrates hated writing and we know this because his most well known student, Plato, wrote all of his tirades down. Neal Postman has a chapter in 'Amusing Ourselves To Death' that replicated this lament made by the Dunkers - an oral Christian religion - about their loss of identity when forced to write down their beliefs in order to be recognized. Harold Innis (1954, 1998) in the 'Bias of Communication' describes it as an unseating of monopolies of knowledge creation/control as each new medium is introduced and necessarily consumes the dominating medium that came before. Hope this helps Ravi --------------------------- Ravindra N. Mohabeer, PhD Media Studies Vancouver Island University
Hullo AoIRists,
I recently looked more closely at the Marlon Brando movie, "The Wild One" (1953) (the source of a long-favored response to the question, "What are you rebelling against?" (Brando) "What-a-ya got?")
About 20 minutes into the film there is, by my lights, a rather remarkable exchange between the (remarkably well-behaved) bikers and the ancient bar-keeper Jimmy. They are asking "what do you hicks do around here?", and in the course of his response, Jimmy makes a couple of interesting media pronouncements: == Jimmy: I mind my own business. Listen to the radio uh, music that is. News is no good. It excites people.
(biker): Hey Jim what about TV? You like TV?
Jimmy: What?
(biker): That new thing, Jim. Television.
Jimmy: Oh, pictures. No, no pictures. Everything these days is pictures. Pictures and a lot of noise. Nobody even knows how to talk. They just grunt at each other. ==
This seems a striking expression - somewhat ironic as it appears within a film as another "picture" medium - of a kind of "medium panic" (my term, I think), i.e., in parallel with "moral panic," but in this case the fear that a new medium will totally displace older ones, including speech itself.
(Parallels with some contemporary critiques and concerns about more recent media are also nicely obvious.)
At the risk of revealing (yet once again) my vast ignorance - if only as a historical curiosity - though perhaps now nicely illustrated in this little example - does anyone have an idea, suggestion, vague hunch, etc. - A) where might this "medium panic" have derived from, reflected in the larger culture, etc. Especially vis-a-vis B) any prevailing theories or views on communication and media at the time of the film that would have either supported or critique Jimmy's concern about picture media?
Many thanks in advance, - charles ess
Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication
Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no (mailto:charles.ess@media.uio.no)
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--------------------------- Ravindra N. Mohabeer On 2013-08-25, at 1:04 AM, Charles Ess <charles.ess@gmail.com> wrote:
Hullo AoIRists,
I recently looked more closely at the Marlon Brando movie, "The Wild One" (1953) (the source of a long-favored response to the question, "What are you rebelling against?" (Brando) "What-a-ya got?")
About 20 minutes into the film there is, by my lights, a rather remarkable exchange between the (remarkably well-behaved) bikers and the ancient bar-keeper Jimmy. They are asking "what do you hicks do around here?", and in the course of his response, Jimmy makes a couple of interesting media pronouncements: == Jimmy: I mind my own business. Listen to the radio uh, music that is. News is no good. It excites people.
(biker): Hey Jim what about TV? You like TV?
Jimmy: What?
(biker): That new thing, Jim. Television.
Jimmy: Oh, pictures. No, no pictures. Everything these days is pictures. Pictures and a lot of noise. Nobody even knows how to talk. They just grunt at each other. ==
This seems a striking expression - somewhat ironic as it appears within a film as another "picture" medium - of a kind of "medium panic" (my term, I think), i.e., in parallel with "moral panic," but in this case the fear that a new medium will totally displace older ones, including speech itself.
(Parallels with some contemporary critiques and concerns about more recent media are also nicely obvious.)
At the risk of revealing (yet once again) my vast ignorance - if only as a historical curiosity - though perhaps now nicely illustrated in this little example - does anyone have an idea, suggestion, vague hunch, etc. - A) where might this "medium panic" have derived from, reflected in the larger culture, etc. Especially vis-a-vis B) any prevailing theories or views on communication and media at the time of the film that would have either supported or critique Jimmy's concern about picture media?
Many thanks in advance, - charles ess
Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication
Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Thanks for this - and thanks to several others who have responded both onlist and off. Some very good material is collecting and I hope to pull it together for a unit or module in a class one of these days. I know that "the received tradition" of the Phaedrus in media studies is pretty much as Ravindra puts it here - again, thanks. Allow me a different perspective on Plato, however - one that derives from my background in history of philosophy and exposure thereby to different traditions of reading the dialogues. Let me emphasize that my point in the following is not to quarrel with Ravindra. It is rather to call our collective attention to alternative understandings that might be salutary for us as offering an additional insight or two. One of these philosophical traditions of reading the dialogues is affiliated with the (inf)famous Leo Strauss - but elaborated in different ways (thankfully) by some of his students, including two of my teachers at Penn State (Stanley Rosen first of all). This approach argues (elaborately and in far more detail than I can do here) that the dialogues are intentionally fictive creations by Plato, not ostensible transcripts of ostensible exchanges, etc., though certainly inspired and influenced by the latter. Reading the Phaedrus in this way then calls attention to the dramatic-theatrical opening of the dialogue, which, to be brief, centers on Phaedrus as an ambitious young man who seeks to impress his elders (including Socrates) by appearing to have knowledge and skill that he does not yet have. Writing is his crutch and secret weapon here: he intends to go out of the city to memorize the text of a speech, in hopes that his subsequent performance will give a dazzling impression of wisdom and insight. Socrates and Phaedrus go through a number of exchanges and arguments, and much more needs to be said about the _context_ these establish. Here all I can do is point out that the well-known, often cited, ostensible critique of writing, is specifically introduced as a _myth_ - _mythos_ in Greek, literally an oral tradition. Socrates' use of myth is fairly specific and careful, almost technical, at least as Plato presents it (again, Socrates is to some extent a fictive-theatrical character here, not necessarily an attempt at a faithful portrait, etc.). In the dialogues I know best (including the Symposium, the Republic, the Crito, the Phaedo), a myth is most often introduced in ways similar to Jesus' use of parables (another oral teacher, of course) - namely, as teaching devices designed to make a particular point to a particular audience in a particular context. Hence, as with the parables (and, for that matter,the Analects of Confucius, still another oral teacher), it is difficult (if not impossible) to transform them into generalizations. On this reading, then, the critique of writing is primarily a pedagogical effort to critique Phaedrus' excessive (on this view) trust in writing as an instrument or tool of deception. (As a myth, it is also an indirect critique - one that require Phaedrus to connect some dots: much more effective than a direct slap-down.) If this reading is defensible, then the critique of writing is much more context- and character-specific - not necessarily a general pronouncement about writing as such. The latter interpretation would be further problematic given that the critique of writing is exquisitely developed in a _written_ text. There is more to be said in favor of this interpretation - but here I simply wanted to introduce the outlines of it on the occasion of its mention. Again, my intention is not to quarrel with Ravindra here. It is rather to help us be aware that there is more than one reading of this (in)famous myth. Indeed, in my view, this alternative reading is at least as interesting for media scholars as the received view, as it points to a much more nuanced and developed understanding of media than we otherwise tend to give our pre-electric ancestors credit for. In short: more research is needed ... (smile) - c.
The earliest 'medium-panic' that I can note is in a Socratic dialogue called the Phaedeus - a lament of the loss of dialogue between writer/author once ideas are codified and 'fixed' on a page that can be disseminated and appear in a context-less space without the benefit of directly interrogating the originator of a thought. Socrates hated writing and we know this because his most well known student, Plato, wrote all of his tirades down.
Neal Postman has a chapter in 'Amusing Ourselves To Death' that replicated this lament made by the Dunkers - an oral Christian religion - about their loss of identity when forced to write down their beliefs in order to be recognized. Harold Innis (1954, 1998) in the 'Bias of Communication' describes it as an unseating of monopolies of knowledge creation/control as each new medium is introduced and necessarily consumes the dominating medium that came before.
Hope this helps Ravi
--------------------------- Ravindra N. Mohabeer, PhD Media Studies Vancouver Island University
Hullo AoIRists,
I recently looked more closely at the Marlon Brando movie, "The Wild One" (1953) (the source of a long-favored response to the question, "What are you rebelling against?" (Brando) "What-a-ya got?")
About 20 minutes into the film there is, by my lights, a rather remarkable exchange between the (remarkably well-behaved) bikers and the ancient bar-keeper Jimmy. They are asking "what do you hicks do around here?", and in the course of his response, Jimmy makes a couple of interesting media pronouncements: == Jimmy: I mind my own business. Listen to the radio uh, music that is. News is no good. It excites people.
(biker): Hey Jim what about TV? You like TV?
Jimmy: What?
(biker): That new thing, Jim. Television.
Jimmy: Oh, pictures. No, no pictures. Everything these days is pictures. Pictures and a lot of noise. Nobody even knows how to talk. They just grunt at each other. ==
This seems a striking expression - somewhat ironic as it appears within a film as another "picture" medium - of a kind of "medium panic" (my term, I think), i.e., in parallel with "moral panic," but in this case the fear that a new medium will totally displace older ones, including speech itself.
(Parallels with some contemporary critiques and concerns about more recent media are also nicely obvious.)
At the risk of revealing (yet once again) my vast ignorance - if only as a historical curiosity - though perhaps now nicely illustrated in this little example - does anyone have an idea, suggestion, vague hunch, etc. - A) where might this "medium panic" have derived from, reflected in the larger culture, etc. Especially vis-a-vis B) any prevailing theories or views on communication and media at the time of the film that would have either supported or critique Jimmy's concern about picture media?
Many thanks in advance, - charles ess
Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication
Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no (mailto:charles.ess@media.uio.no)
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--------------------------- Ravindra N. Mohabeer
On 2013-08-25, at 1:04 AM, Charles Ess <charles.ess@gmail.com> wrote:
Hullo AoIRists,
I recently looked more closely at the Marlon Brando movie, "The Wild One" (1953) (the source of a long-favored response to the question, "What are you rebelling against?" (Brando) "What-a-ya got?")
About 20 minutes into the film there is, by my lights, a rather remarkable exchange between the (remarkably well-behaved) bikers and the ancient bar-keeper Jimmy. They are asking "what do you hicks do around here?", and in the course of his response, Jimmy makes a couple of interesting media pronouncements: == Jimmy: I mind my own business. Listen to the radio uh, music that is. News is no good. It excites people.
(biker): Hey Jim what about TV? You like TV?
Jimmy: What?
(biker): That new thing, Jim. Television.
Jimmy: Oh, pictures. No, no pictures. Everything these days is pictures. Pictures and a lot of noise. Nobody even knows how to talk. They just grunt at each other. ==
This seems a striking expression - somewhat ironic as it appears within a film as another "picture" medium - of a kind of "medium panic" (my term, I think), i.e., in parallel with "moral panic," but in this case the fear that a new medium will totally displace older ones, including speech itself.
(Parallels with some contemporary critiques and concerns about more recent media are also nicely obvious.)
At the risk of revealing (yet once again) my vast ignorance - if only as a historical curiosity - though perhaps now nicely illustrated in this little example - does anyone have an idea, suggestion, vague hunch, etc. - A) where might this "medium panic" have derived from, reflected in the larger culture, etc. Especially vis-a-vis B) any prevailing theories or views on communication and media at the time of the film that would have either supported or critique Jimmy's concern about picture media?
Many thanks in advance, - charles ess
Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication
Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Charles Ess said:
... Socrates' use of myth is fairly specific and careful, almost technical, at least as Plato presents it (again, Socrates is to some extent a fictive-theatrical character here, not necessarily an attempt at a faithful portrait, etc.).
Paul Johnson amusingly calls this character Platsoc. (Socrates: A Man for Our Times)
participants (4)
-
Charles Ess -
Luis Hestres -
Michael Allan -
Ravindra Mohabeer