[Air-L] A Sunday morning curiosity: Marlon Brando and Medium Theory in 1953?

[Luis Hestres]

Charles,  

I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with film/TV theory (at least not anymore) to answer the 2nd question. But as to the first, maybe this was a dig by the screenwriter(s) at the emerging medium of TV? At the time TV was drawing audiences away from the movie theaters and people in the movie business weren't sure films would survive. Maybe this bit of dialogue expressed that anxiety in the film industry, perhaps tinged with some disdain for it from people who may have ended up working there eventually out of necessity.  

It's not unusual for writers to throw self-referential material into scrips…e,g, the Simpsons writers' many many digs at Harvard and the other Ivies, the Sopranos' 'Christopher' episode that made fun of criticism the show received for its portrayal of Italian-Americans, or the 'D-Girl' episode, Seinfeld's whole 'Jerry' TV pilot story arc, etc. I dunno who often screenwriters in the 50s did this, but I'll bet they did more often than many realized at the time.

Luis  

- - - - -
Luis E. Hestres
Ph.D. candidate | School of Communication | American University
More about me at luishestres.com (http://luishestres.com/) or LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hestres) | Follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/luishestres/) | Visit my SSRN Author page (http://ssrn.com/author=1820222)  

"Theoretical critiques are like sociopaths: Their aggressive drives are rarely balanced by constructive instincts."  -- From "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory" by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Sociological Forum 14(1), 1999


On Sunday, August 25, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Charles Ess wrote:

> Hullo AoIRists,
>  
> I recently looked more closely at the Marlon Brando movie, "The Wild One"
> (1953) (the source of a long-favored response to the question, "What are you
> rebelling against?" (Brando) "What-a-ya got?")
>  
> About 20 minutes into the film there is, by my lights, a rather remarkable
> exchange between the (remarkably well-behaved) bikers and the ancient
> bar-keeper Jimmy. They are asking "what do you hicks do around here?", and
> in the course of his response, Jimmy makes a couple of interesting media
> pronouncements:  
> ==
> Jimmy: I mind my own business. Listen to the radio ­ uh, music that is.  
> News is no good. It excites people.
>  
> (biker): Hey Jim ­ what about TV? You like TV?
>  
> Jimmy: What?
>  
> (biker): That new thing, Jim. Television.
>  
> Jimmy: Oh, pictures. No, no pictures. Everything these days is pictures.
> Pictures and a lot of noise.  Nobody even knows how to talk.  They just
> grunt at each other.
> ==
>  
> This seems a striking expression - somewhat ironic as it appears within a
> film as another "picture" medium - of a kind of "medium panic" (my term, I
> think), i.e., in parallel with "moral panic," but in this case the fear that
> a new medium will totally displace older ones, including speech itself.
>  
> (Parallels with some contemporary critiques and concerns about more recent
> media are also nicely obvious.)
>  
> At the risk of revealing (yet once again) my vast ignorance -
> if only as a historical curiosity - though perhaps now nicely illustrated in
> this little example - does anyone have an idea, suggestion, vague hunch,
> etc. -
> A) where might this "medium panic" have derived from, reflected in the
> larger culture, etc.
> Especially vis-a-vis
> B) any prevailing theories or views on communication and media at the time
> of the film that would have either supported or critique Jimmy's concern
> about picture media?
>  
> Many thanks in advance,
> - charles ess
>  
> Professor in Media Studies
> Department of Media and Communication
>  
> Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations
> <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
>  
> University of Oslo  
> P.O. Box 1093 Blindern
> NO-0317  
> Oslo Norway
> email: charles.ess at media.uio.no (mailto:charles.ess at media.uio.no)
>  
>  
>  
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