The Perfect Response | EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IN A DISTRACTED AGE

[A 2016 piece originally titled “Happily Misinformed” cites a feature of our age that seems even more appropriate now than when it was first published. How can we explain people who hold ersatz opinions in contradiction to established facts and evidence? Here’s an updated version of that piece.]

In his sobering 1989 study, Democracy Without Citizens, Robert Entman dwells on the irony of living in an information-rich age among uninformed citizens. There is a rich paradox to a culture where most members have a vast virtual library available on their computer, yet would struggle to pass a third grade civics test. According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center, only one in three Americans can name our three branches of government. And only the same lone third could identify the party that controls each of the two houses of Congress. Fully a fifth of their sample thought that close decisions in the Supreme Court were sent to Congress to be settled.

Add in the dismal results of map literacy tests of high school and college students (“Where is Africa?,” “Identify your city on this map”), and we have just a few markers of a failed information society.

As Entman noted, “computer and communication technology has enhanced the ability to obtain and transmit information rapidly and accurately,” but “the public’s knowledge of facts or reality have actually deteriorated.” The result is “more political fantasy and myth transmitted by the very same news media.” We seem to live comfortably without even elementary understandings of forces that effect our lives.

This condition is sometimes identified as a feature of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a peculiarly distressing form of functional ignorance observed by two Cornell psychologists. Their basic idea is that many of us seem not to be bothered by what we don’t know, producing a level of ignorance that allows us to overestimate our knowledge. Dunning and Kruger found that “incompetent” individuals (those falling into the lowest quartile of knowledge on a subject) often failed to recognize their own lack of skill, failed to recognize the extent to which they were misinformed, and did not to accurately gauge the skills of others. In short, a person’s ignorance can actually increase rather than decrease their informational confidence. If you have an Uncle Fred who is certain that former President Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya, or that vaccines cause autism, you have an idea of what kind of willful ignorance this represents.

**The Boundaries of the Unknown Grow the More We Know**

Think of this pattern in an inverted sense: from the perspective of individuals who truly know what they are talking about. Even for the well-informed, the more they know about a subject, the larger the circumference of the boundaries that delineate the unknown. It takes considerable knowledge to know what you don’t know. That’s why those who have mastered a subject area are often the most humble about their expertise: their expanded understanding of a field give them a sense of the many areas that remain to be explored.

All of this makes listening to the truly ignorant a measure of our forbearance. We are left to vicariously know the shame of someone who is not smart enough to feel it. As with our President, we wonder why he doesn’t feel more embarrassment for his exaggerations and falsehoods. Has he never really read about the substantive policy accomplishments of F.D.R (the FDIC, Social Security) or L.B.J.? (successful anti-poverty programs, the Civil Rights acts of 1964 or 1965). Can slapping on tariffs for goods and subverting long-standing values of equality and fairness be enough to count as great leadership?

The Dunning-Kruger Effect shows it self in other ways as well. A key factor is our distraction by all forms of media—everything from texting to empty-headed television programming—that leaves us with little available time to be contributing members of the community. When the norm is checking our phones over 100 times a day, we have perhaps reached a tipping point where we have no time or energy left to fill in our own informational black holes.

The idea of citizenship should mean more. In this coming election cycle it’s worth remembering that nearly half of eligible voters will probably not bother to vote. And even more will have no interest in learning about president and legislative candidates. Worst still, this is all happening at a time when candidates have been captured by a reality-show logic that substitutes melodrama for more sober discussions of how they intend to govern. Put it altogether, and its clear that too many of us don’t notice that we are engrossed with a sideshow rather than the main event.

_{MGM-Sony-Streisand Scoring Stage in Los Angeles}

Opera will always have La Scala and Covent Garden. And the Beatles will always be identified with EMI’s Abby Road Studios in London. But these mostly unseen Hollywood scoring stages may matter even more.

If you have wondered why a film in a good cinema can be so engrossing, more credit than you might think should go to the sonic power of the score you are hearing. The audio tracks of all sorts of older and recent movies can be breathtaking in their depth and clarity. Think of the orchestral scores of John Williams, Rachel Portman, Howard Shore, Alan Sylvestri, Bernard Herrmann and many others.

The old standby, E.T., is unthinkable without William’s wall to wall music, which was recorded at what is perhaps the most preferred venue for large groups available in the United States. The place: the venerable MGM Scoring Stage on what is now the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City. Now named for Barbra Streisand, the 6100 square-foot Stage features a short but potent reverberation time that seems to make big movie set pieces positively bloom. Musicians, audio engineers and filmmakers love how this building sounds. For most, any changes to this this barn-like room would be unthinkable. You’ve surely heard it, though probably never seen it. It played a big part in films such as Empire of the Sun, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, La La Land, as well as many classics, including Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind and Singing in the Rain. If it can sometimes be hard to know where film magic actually begins, this is one place to look (or at least hear). The history and glorious sound of this stage makes it one of the most beloved film industry landmarks in Los Angeles.

The film score is probably how most Americans now experience the full-throated power of a traditional orchestra.

It’s no surprise that filmmakers treat this large room filled with its forest of microphones as if entering sacred ground. It’s likely to be the spot where a composer and director will first hear a score that they have only known in piano or MIDI arrangements. Adding to the sense that this is a place of miraculous revelations, they are also likely to hear it played perfectly by an impressive cadre of studio musicians.*

Another landmark is the Scoring Stage built in 1929 on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. Thirty years ago studio executives were eyeing it as a tempting space to convert into production offices, but in the late 90s actor Clint Eastwood persuaded them to rebuild and preserve it. Some think that the renamed Eastwood Scoring Stage has a slightly drier acoustic, but stunning scores have been laid down within it, including those for Casablanca, Back to the Future, Days of Wine and Roses, Rattatouille, Frozen and many more.

An interesting side note: the Warner stage was also used as a location in a pivotal scene in the 1954 version of A Star is Born. Judy Garland records a song while Ray Heindorf conducts. Play the scene to the end and catch a great moment of film acting. James Mason’s private conversation with Garland’s Esther includes a proposal of marriage that has been secretly recorded by one of the stage’s engineers. Her candid list of his faults that all in the room hear during playback turns into an excruciating humiliation. The moment is a little master-class on film acting.

It seems fitting in the midst of the current renaissance of interest in film music that we also celebrate the remaining purpose-built stages on the lots of the remaining studios. Similar spaces run by Fox (the Newman Scoring Stage in Century City) and Skywalker Sound (in Marin County, north of San Francisco) contribute to the survival of the orchestra as a major tool of film-making. A film score is probably how most Americans now experience the full-throated power of a traditional orchestra.

There is also an interesting irony in how these nearly perfect spaces are meant to be used. The amazing performances are obviously heard via well-placed microphones rather than a live audience. Ask a player, and they will tell you that going to work in comfortable clothes has some virtues. But the applause that usually comes with a live performance in is not part of the picture. Our awe at their work only comes after the fact.

_{*Thanks to YouTube, many videos with good audio show musicians and composers at working on scores for films, television, and games. For a good sample based on the work of composer Peter Boyer at the Sony Stage see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9NiicNKDGU}