TAE on Books
By Kelly Jane Torrance
Thomas de Zengotita asks hard questions in his new book, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It (Bloomsbury). “[I]s there anything you do that remains essentially unmediated, anything you don’t experience reflexively through some commodified representation of it? Birth? Marriage? Illness?” he writes. “Think of all the movies and memoirs, philosophies and techniques, self-help books, counselors, programs, presentations, workshops. Think of the fashionable vocabularies generated by those venues, and think of how all this conditions your experience.”
Unfortunately, he doesn’t provide many answers. The big idea of Mediated, the result of 30 years of research, is that modern man has lost his connection to reality. The media stands between us and the real world; we now live through mere representations of that reality.
The prognosis is pretty grim: “Of course, for most of us there are still a few things that are just what they are. Maybe you still buy pencils or paper clips just to use, and not because of what they represent, what they say about you. Maybe you have a nice little relationship with your feet, rubbing them together under the blankets or picking at a callus on your toe. A few things. Precious few.”
As he explains, this media onslaught has brought with it a heightened self-awareness. Every choice we make reflects on us. How we see ourselves and how we wish others to see us become deciding factors. The most obvious example of this is car marketing, but de Zengotita sees it everywhere. We don’t just buy something to use it—we buy it to reinforce our identity, whatever we’ve decided that is: yuppie, aesthete, progressive.
He has a point. Everything in our culture now is directed towards… us. We live in a “flattering field of represented options,” de Zengotita argues. Marketers, Hollywood executives, musicians, they all exist to satisfy our needs. American Idol has just made this triumph of capitalism more obvious.
He’s not the first to notice the individualism of modern culture. Many conservatives have been making that complaint for years. They will find much to cheer in de Zengotita’s analysis, but they won’t find an unalloyed friend. De Zengotita wisely links this culture of narcissism to relativism, the idea that every opinion counts just as much as any other. But this Harper’s Magazine contributing editor doesn’t feel entirely comfortable agreeing with the right: “What the flattered self enjoys by way of options in the mediated world in general gets expressed philosophically as that notorious ‘relativism’ that conservative critics—ever suspicious of theory, glued always to the surface of phenomena—blame for everything they don’t like and/or can’t understand about contemporary culture.”
What sets de Zengotita apart is his analysis of the processes that have led to this hyper-individualism. For him it isn’t, for example, rejection of traditional morality and religion. The engaging start to the book contrasts the difference between the generation that witnessed Pearl Harbor and the one that lived through Kennedy’s assassination. Everyone in the latter group has a story about where they were when they heard the news; no one in the former would even understand such a question.
What has changed, says de Zengotita, is that the focus has shifted from real events to us. The events matter only in relation to our own stories. There’s no disputing this, but de Zengotita is weaker on proving a causal connection. He believes, for example, that the difference in the generations above is television. Everyone saw the footage from Texas on TV, so everyone felt he was actually part of the story. But he himself has a fascinating account of the reactions of a bunch of budding actors who thought the “news” was an improv test. Their reactions were formed before any media got in the way.
Mediated is filled with such anecdotes and examples, all bolstering his claim that the media has changed the way we live. Everything is disposable now, including human relationships. If we can throw out diapers and dishes and be constantly provided with new entertainment, why should we settle for one life-long relationship? And the endless stream of disaster and crisis footage to which we’re subjected has arguably made us a little more unfeeling. The media is even responsible for drawing out childhood: “[H]ere are also so many different ways to be, so any different lifestyles, so many different versions of the world. Haunted by the possibility of buyer’s remorse, we dawdle on the brink, trying this, trying that.”
De Zengotita is most interesting when he examines how our hyper-mediated culture has turned us all into performers. It’s not enough merely to live—we must be the stars of our lives, with the attendant glory. It’s why Lou Gehrig was happy just to play well but sports players now, particularly in the NFL, must have their victory “dances.” Teenage girls can’t just talk anymore—they have their own performance language, as de Zengotita explains in an amusing section on the original and current usage of the word “like.”
De Zengotita’s own style can be almost as grating as that of a teenager at times, however. He comes off as trying a little too hard to perform himself as the “cool media commentator.” But his biggest problem is his own ambivalence towards the developments he so insightfully chronicles. He makes rather a lot of excuses for offering no solutions, no suggestions to the problems to which he opens our eyes: It’s too early for anyone to understand modern society. No one can provide easy, pat answers to issues this deep.
But the real reason de Zengotita doesn’t want to lead us off the path we’ve taken is that he doesn’t know if he wants to leave. At the end of almost every story of how media has infiltrated some other aspect of our lives, he grudgingly admits that he actually finds it, echoing Martha Stewart, a “good thing.” Sure, our kids aren’t learning much in school because teachers don’t want to tell them they’re not perfect and hurt their self-esteem. But isn’t this increased acceptance a good thing? Our lives have been taken over by technology; we’re never out of touch by phone or e-mail, just enjoying the world around us. But isn’t this increased ability to communicate a good thing? “I’m so confused, I can’t tell anymore,” he confesses.
That may be understandable, but one wishes the time and thought de Zengotita has obviously put into his very perceptive theory might result in more than just a promising, but somewhat aimless book. He is not the first, of course, to decry some aspects of modern life while reaping their advantages. De Zengotita has provided a detailed analysis of the problems. It is up to someone else to suggest new ways of living.
*****
The Internet has turned out to be a perfect medium for the me-centered culture. Anyone with a computer can now broadcast their opinions to the multitudes, through e-mail, web sites, and blogs.
Amazon.com is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and one wonders if the online bookseller will be better known for revolutionizing retailing or reviewing. Authors are increasingly despairing at the power of the site’s sometimes anonymous reviewers, who may someday make or break a book.
It is also pioneering some of that representation de Zengotita worries about. The site has announced a tenth anniversary concert streamed live online, featuring the once-radical Bob Dylan.
Kelly Jane Torrance is TAEonline's book columnist.
