Today's Reading

I chose today's readings for today because they're different. One is a generalization of the future of media, and the others are a specific critique on gender and the Internet. Through this course I want to both examine the big, arching scenery and theory, but also the specifics. Luckily, I found this tiny book, Mass Culture and Electronic Media (1999), from the Streamlines series. The book has 15 essays/articles/commentary pieces on, you guessed it, culture and electronic media.

Today I read the section of this book titled "Family, Gender and the Electronic Media." The first essay, Family Life by Marie Winn (an excerpt from her book The Plug-in Drug), discusses how television has effected family life. The essay explains how television changed the family dynamic. Starting with a quote from a 1949 The New York Times' television critic that says, basically, that televisions will bring families together and finishing up with the comment that television has basically been a part of the disintegration of the American family. Whew. That's a pretty quick change for the 60 years in between these two writers.

Winn explains that through watching television, people become more passive communicators. People don't know how to talk to each other anymore, they only know how to listen to people on television. She even goes so far as to say that real people aren't as engaging to children as trained actors, and therefore, of course Mr. Rogers will have more appeal to a child than talking to a real person.

Honestly, I think this is a bit too much blame placed on television and not enough placed on the family. If the family is falling apart, nobody ever blames the refrigerator or the washing machine. I know that sounds absurd, but when you think about it, that's all a television is: an appliance. She admits that television didn't do all on its own, but it was part of a trend of events and inventions that ultimately ruined family life. I agree it's part of a trend, but I think this essay needs some updating. Since 1999, plenty of things have become worse than television in undermining family time.

For example, last Thanksgiving, as always, my Dad and I go to dinner at my grandparents' house, with my uncle and his two teenage daughters. When it's time for dinner, we turn off the television (no matter if it's 4th and inches on a very important football game), gather at the table and talk and eat. Until this year. When there was eating and talking, but most of the talking was happening through text messages. My cousins (16 and 18) were texting their friends about how bored they were and how miserable they were. My uncle was e-mailing clients on his BlackBerry. My Dad and I were eating potato salad. Personally, this situation is way worse than television. Before eating, we were gathered around the tv, cheering on whatever team was playing as a family. As a group. We talked about football and bowl game bids and what college players would be drafted. Personally, it's more offensive to me when someone has a private conversation via text message at the table than my uncle craning his neck to see the television from the dining room.

I don't agree with her that we are less effective oral communicators because of television. I learned to speak and write and read at a very early age all because of Sesame Street and other PBS programming. I would like to read this same essay updated for 2007. Maybe tv isn't the problem anymore. Maybe it's something worse.

The second and third essays in the section were on violence in the media. The first piece, by Sissela Bok (Aggression: The Impact of Media Violence) explains that when children see violence on television they learn to be violent. She gives some breathing room and says that drugs and weapons and bad parenting and poverty may play a part too. The next essay, by Mike Males (Who Us? Stop Blaming Kids and TV), says that REAL violence is just as bad and influential as fake tv violence. He uses the often-cited statistic that the average American child will see 20,000 violent acts on tv before graduating from high school, and then adds another: During that 18 years, 15 million real domestic violent incidents will happen and cause 10 million serious injuries and 40,000 child deaths. He blames parents for violent children, and political action committees for making mountains from molehills. (For example, Mothers Against Drunk Driving led an aggressive campaign against the Budweiser frog commercials, even though a survey proved that kids found the ads funny, but they didn't make them want to drink. Also, 90% of the country's 16,000 alcohol-related traffic deaths per year are caused by persons 21+.)

Males' essay is a little more convincing because he uses hard numbers, facts and data to back himself up. He also would rather point many fingers in different places than just blame one specific thing for all problems. Bok's essay is less convincing because when she uses hard data, it doesn't always support her statements.

The final essay in the section is by Barbara Kantrowitz and is on gender issues on the Internet. Men, Women, and Computers hypothesizes that women don't feel welcome on the Internet. She uses interesting data and anecdotal evidence to back herself up as well. Girls and boys are equally interested in computers until about fifth grade, says a University of Minnesota sociologist. Then it becomes Barbie vs. Nintendo. Boys play video games, girls do their nails. Women are forced out (by frustration or hazing) of computer science departments and classes. Kantrowitz does explain how things are turning around though. The advent of women's-centered Internet sites, discussion forums and classes helped women become more comfortable on the Web. But fundamentally, she says, it's about the relationships women have with technology.

This is very interesting to me. Kantrowitz says that men imagine that technology can make them powerful, help them transcend their limitations and that women imagine computers are a means to an end that help people do work. This fundamental difference (technology as toy vs technology as tool) is mentioned in the very last paragraph, just where I wanted a lot more.

Overall, her essay is interesting, but outdated. I don't believe the Internet is dudes-only anymore. I do, however, think what she said about gendered approaches to technology does hold true.

After these very practical and narrow papers, I read Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is the Message (excerpted in The New Media Reader). This is grand theory in the grandest and most theoretical sense. Basically, McLuhan says that it doesn't matter what you say, it's purely how you say it. Content is irrelevant. And to a huge extent, I agree with him more after reading the other essays. Women are afraid of the Internet because it's "The Internet," not because of the content. People read glossy magazines because they're pretty. I have read this essay many times, and I've always felt like I got it, but rarely felt like it mattered. I am a content person. I want to be a writer. Will people buy my book just because it's a book? Hopefully not. But the world does not exist in hopefuls.

But McLuhan is right. At least a little. A few weeks ago a friend was in my apartment. On the coffee table are stacks of unread magazines (I subscribe to way too many). "The New Yorker," "Rolling Stone" and "Paste" receive no notice, but there, on one stack, is an issue of "Esquire."

"That's a man magazine," she said.

I started to explain the history of Esquire and literary journalism and the shift in reporting and writing in the 70s and Joan Didion. It didn't matter to her. The medium, Esquire, a "man magazine" was more important than the message, the 60+ years of literary and journalism history.


So, that's what I read today and what I thought about it. Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be reading essays about film, television and music and how new media has helped or hindered them.