All posts by Gary C. Woodward

The High Costs of Living in an Ocular-Centric World

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Video Installation, Tim_White-Sobieski wikipedia.org
Video Installation, Tim White-Sobieski                                                                  Wikipedia.org 

Our fascination with video in all forms his has resulted in the loss of many of the nation’s newspapers, the decline of the network documentary, the near-disappearance of  the magazine of ideas, and a younger generation for whom extended time with the printed page is an ordeal.

Over sixty years ago an American philosopher described with unusual clarity the very different communication functions of visual media.  Susanne Langer was interested in art and social rituals, exploring how we process pictorial information. Philosophy in a New Key (Mentor Books, 1942) still resonates as a way to understand the importance of our mid-Twentieth Century cultural turn towards images, represented primarily by television, but also all of the other digital platforms that build on the “visual interfaces” that increased the spread of digital media. Langer was writing in the 1940s and could not have anticipated how video and computer technology evolved. But her insights were taken up by the Media Ecology Movement over the years, helping to clarify a set of effects that every American needs to understand.

Susanne Langer
              Susanne Langer

Here’s the key insight that has evolved from her initial work. While video and television were once celebrated as new ways to pass on information, the better assessment is that these forms actually undermine the quest for ideas. Think of ideas as the non-material but potent bases for understanding the world around us.  Ideas order our thinking and give form to our values. So there is irony that the flowering of theoretical breakthroughs in psychology, sociology and other fields in the first part of the Twentieth Century the seeds of non-print media would be sown to make them seem less urgent.

Consider the growth of critical and analytical insights that came mid-century from thinkers such as Walter Lippmann (modern democracies), George Herbert Mead (the construction of the self), Kenneth Burke (how language has its way with us) and David Riesman (the nature of the American character), to name just a few.  All offered works about how we consciously construct ourselves and understand the external world: elaborately laid out accounts of what Langer called “discursive understandings” which can best be understood be understood on the page.

What changed? The culture of ideas would be undermined by rapidly expanding access to the presentational form of television, which feeds the already strong human impulse to feel rather than think abstractly. In plain words, visual media tied to commercial goals are usually death to print-based explorations of ideas. In plain language, visual media tied to commercial goals are usually death to the exploration of ideas.

If this sounds like aimless armchair theorizing, it isn’t. Langer’s original insight has helped us understand that television is representational rather than conceptual.  It needs to show something, and nothing is more meaningful than the human face: the primary register of emotion.

As later writers noted, we don’t watch video content for the richness of its explanatory power.  In fact, a printed transcript of a supposed informational program usually looks pretty sparse in print. The quintessential moment of television is actually the close-up.  Any television director learning their craft will know that the face is the informational content of television. Human features are expressive. We are hardwired to read them and absorb all the cues they give us.  While a theater actor needs to project his character with his full body.  A television actor knows the key to success is mostly in how he uses expressiveness centered on the eyes.  In spite of what we might think, we don’t watch even a “brainy” television program like Jeopardy because “we can learn a lot.”  Mostly what draws us in is the human drama of trying to find the right answer.  We like to ride the roller coaster of relief or regret along with the contestant who will perform them.

So what’s the cost in living in a video-saturated world?  It’s ultimately that television is generally a distraction from what we have designed a liberal education and our great academic institutions to do: to encourage exploration of ideas that illuminate the human condition. Lord knows someone like television interviewer Charlie Rose tries. So do the interviewers of book authors who regularly appear on C-SPAN. But most of us are otherwise engaged, watching sketch comedies and police procedurals featuring people in desperate straits. The gut reaction in tight close-up will always trump a “talking head.” Vital concepts like economic fairness and social justice may be important, but they have the disadvantage of no precise material form.

Ask a television director to produce a program of ideas, and they will despair.  There’s only so much B-roll footage you can show to enliven a visual presentation on American criminal justice practices, the widening gap between rich and poor, or how the sale of derivatives contributed to the financial collapse in 2008. Within commercial media the preference is almost always to underwrite programs of presentational content filled with images of humans in the process of coping.  These are the kinds of “expressive moments” a CBS News executive once noted should be the bases of most of his network’s stories.

Because longer discussions of policy and ideas can’t compete, our fascination with video in all forms his contributed to the loss of many of the nation’s newspapers, the decline of the network documentary, the near-disappearance of magazines of ideas, and a younger generation for whom extended time with the printed page is an ordeal.

In American culture there is an entire turn away from accepting and exploring challenging issues of human and social complexity. Not only are presidential campaigns beginning to resemble reality shows, with their heightened moments of rage and put-downs, but we now expect that any expert called upon to comment on a breaking story should be able to explain themselves in seconds rather than minutes.

We are indeed paying a high price in our wholesale flight from the realm of discursive media. If conceptual thinking is an ability that makes us smarter, we have reasons to be concerned that our fascination with screens is doing the reverse.

Comments: woodward@tcnj.edu

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Crummy First Drafts

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writing on paperThe problem with settling on a first pass of a statement is that it may reveal that we still don’t know what we think.

There are times when the right medium for addressing another is the written word.  An extended statement provides space to dwell on necessary complexities, make a case with sufficient amplification and evidence, and possibly guide readers towards an action they have been reluctant to take. Good writing is coherent, interesting, and expansive. Whether we’re working on an essay, report or letter; we know when we need to make the most of ideas laid down on the page or its electronic equivalents. This is a ritual for high school students working on the perfect essay to a selective college, the office worker on deadline to finish a report that will be seen by peers and management, or the citizen making a case to reluctant officials or neighbors.

In her useful book for writers, Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott declares unequivocally that every writer needs to get past the “shitty first draft.”  It’s her not-so-gentle way to remind budding scribes to take at least several more passes over the prose they  are usually too ready to accept as sufficiently worked out.

Part of the problem with settling on a first draft of any extended statement is that it reflects the likely fact that we aren’t yet clear about what we know or believe. Clarity comes when the theme of a piece begins to reveal itself, sometimes late in the process.

Whitman-pasted-notes-for a poem LOC
Notes of Walt Whitman for a Portion of Leaves of Grass                                   Library of Congress

Occasionally the last summarizing statement of an essay is the very first thing that should be said.  But we don’t know that until we’ve finished the chain of thought that gets us there. This is because we often think inductively from cases to conclusions.  But ideas on the page need a reverse process of deduction.  Major claims usually should come first.  And there’s the rub; we first have to discover them, lest we do the equivalent of showing up at a great party just as it’s winding down.

I suspect I’m not the only one to notice that after a day or so, my first drafts look dead on arrival. They are usually confusing, wordy, and both over-written and underdeveloped.  Having discovered what I really think, successive drafts refine the process.  With time it usually becomes clear that the points I wanted to make can be said with greater economy and clarity.

The left hemisphere of the brain thinks in language, and it’s sometimes only too happy to stay on the case longer than the rest of our mind.

A writer also discovers that the act of revising is enough to set the mind off on its own extended tour of the landscape that is being surveyed. This is a curious phenomenon. It turns out that not all writing happens when a person is formally on task. Better ways to make points force their way into our consciousness even when we move on to other things, like walking or trying to sleep. The left hemisphere of the brain thinks in language, and it’s sometimes only too happy to stay on the case longer than the rest of our mind.

We can also be eternally grateful that word processing makes edits so easy.  A few writers like to work out ideas in longhand, often on a legal pad.  But most have found the advantages of word processing programs that make changes easily, with the added usefulness of spell checkers and a thesaurus. The latter tool can help find not just another word for a feeling or idea, but possibly the best word.

I think I have only known one person who wrote and spoke in more or less “finished” prose. This historian was a phenomenon to listen to: a good scholar, amazingly fluent and a gifted lecturer.  It was a relief when he moved to another state.

Perhaps these modest blog posts look like they are dashed off as more or less complete pieces.  If it were only so.  Most take several weeks to develop, going through a dozen or more alterations. The process expands exponentially for a book.  Many authors I know take years to refine and polish a manuscript.  When it’s done well the finished work of a good writer scans so easily.  And that’s the irony of graceful prose.  It’s like sculpture.  Revision helps it take on a naturalness and clarity that makes it easy to ignore the unnecessary bits that have been carved away.