MIT 264G - Media Nation:

Human & Media-Made Worlds

Mondays 7-10, Somerville 3315. Dr. Doug Mann,

SSC 5411. University of Western Ontario, Winter 2004

 

We are in so many ways mediated beings. Things come in between us and our world, both physically and mentally. For one thing, we rely on various technologies to extend our bodies and our minds in space and time - books, eyeglasses, cars, aircraft, telephones and computers. In addition, we connect to our natural environment in a meditated way - nature for us exists mostly in parks and zoos (not to mention on TV nature shows). The very way we communicate with each other is through the mother of all mediations, language. And in our everyday lives we rely on mass media to give us news and entertainment. These media that connect us to our world are rarely if ever value-neutral tools. This course will look at the theory and practise of mediation in the contemporary context through lectures, seminar discussions, and films, and ask students to critically examine the various ways we plugs our selves into the techno-social structure of modernity. Do our media make us, or do we make our media?


Text

Media Nation Reader, ed. Doug Mann.

 

Workload

Quizzes: 18% (6% each, best 3 out of 4, no rewrites for any reasons - see Policies)

Seminar Participation and Attendance: 12% (3% per seminar - see Policies)

Group Presentation (see below): 15%

Essay (5-6 pages, due April 5 in class - see below): 25%

Final Exam (2 hours, covers the whole class): 30%

 

Synopsis of the Course (all readings are in the courseware reader)

1. What is Mediation? What are Media?

Mediation and media. McLuhan: the medium is the message, hot and cool media, extending our central nervous system, the global village and retribalization.

2. Wilderness and Shopping Malls: Mediating our Natural Environment

The Romantic vision of nature. The rise of suburbia. Postmodern views of nature as constructed.

3. TV Nation

Does TV colonize our experience? Reality TV and The Truman Show. Curtis's hapless life.

4. Jamming the Society of the Spectacle

Basic Situationist concepts. Punk rock, Richard Linklater, Debord, culture jamming, Adbusters.

5. Now This! The Degraded Epistemology of the News Media

Media as epistemology. Public discourse as dangerous nonsense. Catchy music & pretty faces.

6. Manufacturing Content: The Cultural Industries Revisited

Capturing cool. The commodification of art. Advertising as the facilitation of envy.

7. Hyperreality and the Desert of the Real

Baudrillard's 3 Orders of Simulacra. The Matrix as the story of evil demons, a saviour & simulacra.

8. Navigating the Smog (time permitting)

9. Jumping Ship: The Ultimate Mediation (time permitting)

 

Seminars


 General: The seminars will be general discussions of four issues in media theory and practice (see below). We'll meet in a smaller separate seminar room from 9 to 10 PM during the last 8 classes in the term instead of the regular lecture hall. If the class is big enough there will be two seminar groups which will alternate meeting every other week (so you get an hour off every other week). I'll announce details in class.


Groups and Teams: By January 26 I'll divide the class into two seminar groups designated Groups Alpha and Beta. The two groups will alternate meeting over an 8-week period. Then I'll divide each Group into 4 "teams" of 3-4 students each designated Teams Red, Blue, Green, and Purple (I'll circulate lists early in the class to get your names). Each team will be assigned 1 of the 4 seminar topics listed below, unless you choose one for yourself before January 26. You'll have about half the seminar time to do your presentation in, the rest being taken up with a general discussion of your findings. If you have some friends you'd like to work with, tell me before mid-January, and I'll do my best to accommodate you. The same goes for topics: if you have a topic you like, let me know early on. Only 1 team will present on each topic in each seminar group, first come, first served.


Presentations: Once you know your team's members and topic exchange contact information and get together outside of class to discuss how you want to go about doing your presentation. Write a 5-page typed double-spaced report as a team (or about 1 page per team member) on the topic listed below and hand it in at the start of the seminar. The report should read like a single paper, and not four or five short papers glued together. Avoid long summaries of the texts, as we'll cover these in lecture.


Your reports should represent the work of the entire team. All active members of the team should have their names on the cover page of the report -- if you're not listed on the cover, you'll get a 0. If a person did no work on the presentation or report, don't put their name on the cover. Your grade will be based both on your written report and the quality of your presentation, though mostly on the former.


Everyone on the team should be given a chance to speak. Short photocopied summaries of your team's position handed out to the rest of the seminar would be nice. The best approach is for each team member to present about 5 minutes (1 page) worth of material to the seminar, and then ask a couple of questions to stimulate discussion. However, you're encouraged to be more creative and use a less traditional approach. Avoid showing long video clips, as time is short.


Peer Evaluations: To make sure each team member gets credit where credit is due, each student will be asked to fill out and hand in a peer evaluation form for your team. These will be anonymous. If I don't get 1 evaluation per active team member, 10% will be deducted from everyone's grade. In other cases, individual student grades will be varied from 5-25% based on these peer evaluations or your effectiveness in the verbal part of the presentation.


Participation and Attendance Grades: You'll be given a P & A grade for each of the four seminars your Group is scheduled to meet. Each seminar is worth 3% of your grade: 1% for attending the full seminar but not talking, 2% for minimal contribution (a remark or two), 3% for full participation. Your grade will be reduced if you're seriously late or leave early.

 

Seminar Presentation Topics and Dates

1. The Mediation of Nature (Group A - February 9; Group B - February 16): Discuss how nature is mediated by modern technology, and how modern human beings have lost touch with nature. Are the Romantic poets right that there is a nature we can return to for emotional grounding? Or is the wilderness itself a human construction? Have city streets and shopping malls become "nature" for the modern individual? Use whatever examples you like to defend your thesis (i.e. either that there is a real nature we can return to, or that true wilderness is gone forever, or that all nature is purely a human construction).

2. TV and the Society of the Spectacle (Group A - March 1; Group B - March 8): Critically discuss one of the following: (a) Mander's criticism of television as a colonization of our experience (bring in whichever television show we watch in class as part of your discussion), OR (b) the Situationists' and Lasn's idea that we live in a society of the spectacle, and that radical media politics demands that we attempt to "jam" consumer culture. For both topics, evaluate the degree to which television jams up our consciousness with consumerist images, and what (if anything) we can do about it. Introduce one or two examples to make your case for each topic.

3. Now This/Manufacturing Content (Group A - March 15; Group B - March 22): Choose one of the following: (a) What are Postman's main critiques of the new media? Is he right that television is a inherently mediocre means of communication? Use one or two examples to prove your case either way. OR (b) Discuss Kingwell's view of the entertainment industries as attempts to manufacture happiness or content, once again introducing one or two examples of your own to make your case. In both cases, critically evaluate the theorist's argument.

4. The Information Glut and Hyperreality (Group A - March 29; Group B - April 5): Choose one of the following: (a) Is Shenk right that we live in an age of data overload? Are we a nation of lonely molecules? Isn't information a good thing, if we can pick and choose freely which elements of it we want to use? OR (b) Evaluate Jean Baudrillard's argument that we live in a hyperreal age, in the Third Order of the Simulacrum, and apply this argument to the movie The Matrix. Is the Internet a sort of proto-Matrix? Are we in danger of losing touch with corporeal existence and living in a purely virtual world?

Essays


Write a 5-6 page (typed, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 11-12 point font) paper on one of the following topics. Make sure you take a position of some sort in your paper. See my "How to Write a Social or Cultural Theory Paper" at http://publish.uwo.ca/~dmann for some tips. Make sure you refer to the course readings and other materials to some degree (if you don't, expect to lose marks). Due April 5 by the end of lecture i.e. 9 PM. Late penalty: 2% per day for up to 7 days (see below).


1. Discuss McLuhan's distinction between hot and cold media, using examples. Which is the Internet? Discuss web pages, e-mail, messenging services, and other aspects of the Internet.


2. Was McLuhan right that electronic media retribalize us, and we now live in a global village? Or have modern media fragmented and alienated us from each other?


3. In what ways do modern cities and technologies mediate us from nature? Compare the Romantic view of nature with the Postmodernist one, arguing for one of them, then applying it to urban life.


4. Is Mander right that television colonizes our experience? Or does it enrich our experience of the world?


5. Are Debord and the Situationists right that we live in a society of the spectacle? Discuss TV, films, or other media in terms of Debord's ideas (read more of his work than that presented in the courseware).


6. How practical or desirable is Kalle Lasn's idea of culture jamming? Discuss a few of his examples.


7. Analyse Richard Linklater's film Waking Life in terms of Debord's and Lasn's ideas.

 

8. What is the essence of Postman's argument that television news is a dangerous form of nonsense and a degraded way of communicating information? Evaluate Postman's argument, using one or more examples of current news shows to make your case.


9. Discuss Kingwell's critique of the culture industries, applying it to one such industry: popular music, film, cultural tourism (e.g. art galleries), or popular literature. Does the industry in question manipulate the masses to manufacture content? If yes, how does it accomplish this? Is there anything wrong with making the masses happy with popular culture?


10. What does Shenk argue are some of the causes of the data smog we're surrounded with today? What are some of the ways we can reduce this smog? Does the massive amount of information available today cause psychological overload, or provide useful knowledge to more and more people?


11. Analyse Baudrillard's notion of the simulacrum, including his three orders. Do we live in the third order of the simulacrum? Give some examples of contemporary media to prove your thesis either way.


12. Use one or more of the media theorists discussed in this course to analyse the film The Matrix. What are the main themes in the movie? Is it a warning about our hyperreal lifestyle?


13. Do modern media tempt us to jump the ship of our corporeal state into a trans-human condition? Include a discussion of The X-Files episode we watched in class, along with the work of William Gibson.


14. Do media control the average human being, or do we control the media? Use one or two of the theorists discussed in this class, and apply their ideas to a specific medium as it stands today: radio, television, film, the Internet.



Policies (please read these over)

Quizzes: There will be 4 quizzes per term, with the best 3 counting as part of your final grade. The quizzes will take about 10-15 minutes, and will be a combination of multiple choice and/or short answer (the structure may vary from quiz to quiz). They'll be as painless as I can make them, and will cover the lectures, readings, and films (the films are a full part of the course, and you will definitely be tested on them). I will announce the exact times of quizzes in class. In general, they will be timed to follow our finishing major units of the course. As you are expected to attend class on a regular basis, missing a quiz because you missed the announcement in an earlier class is not a valid excuse! They'll take place at the end of class. There will be no rewrites of quizzes for ANY reason. The extra quiz is intended to act as a makeup to cover ALL possible reasons for missing a class, including religious holidays, sickness, family emergencies, car accidents, acts of the Deity such as earthquakes and tornadoes, sports, social events, and work in other courses. So don't miss an early quiz on purpose assuming that if you're busy you can rewrite a later quiz!

Essays: Essays are due on Monday April 5. The only valid excuses for late papers are (a) serious illness (accompanied by a doctor's note) or (b) a family tragedy of some sort. In all other cases, if you hand in your paper late, please accept the minimal 2% per day late penalty with grace (the late penalty increases after one week). I'll count Saturday and Sunday as one day combined. Your best bet is to hand it in to me directly in class, or to get it dated by the MIT office - undated papers left under my office door or in my mailbox will be dated when I pick them up. Late penalty schedule: Tues -2%, Wed -4%, Thurs -6%, Fri -8%, Mon -12%, Tues(2) -14%, Wed(2) -18%, Thurs(2) -22%, Fri (2) -24%, Mon (2) -28%, etc.

Plagiarism: Here's the official word: "Plagiarism: Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see Scholastic Offence Policy in the Western Academic Calendar). The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking. Students may be required to submit their written work in electronic form for plagiarism checking." Here's the unofficial word: don't do it! (people do actually get caught by the way).

Class Attendance: All announcements having to do with quizzes, essay writing, exam structure, and so on will be given during class. You'll be tested in part on the lecture materials and class discussions (along with the readings and films). It's up to you to make sure you keep up to date on such things by attending class: though most of the overhead notes are in the course reader, there won't be any additional web notes to cover changes or additions to these notes. At the end of the class I will add 1-2 points to the seminar participation grades of the five or six students who most regularly attended and participated in class, to a maximum of 12%.

E-Mails: I would like to conduct as much of class business as possible in person to avoid misunderstandings and the ever-worsening problem of e-mail congestion. Please don't email me complex questions about the content of the course or how to structure and write an essay - it's far more effective for both of us if you come to speak to me in person about this sort of thing. Also, I reserve the right to not reply to e-mail complaints concerning grades or requests for extensions on assignments - once again, present these in person! The same standards of civility apply to electronic communication as apply to personal conversations or letters. If I receive a rude or impolite e-mail I will ignore it and delete all future e-mails from the offender unread. In short, don't rely on e-mail for any communication you think is important - e-mails are a poor replacement for direct verbal communication and can lead to serious misunderstandings and bad feelings.