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

[Ravindra Mohabeer]

Hi

The earliest 'medium-panic' that I can note is in a Socratic dialogue called the Phaedeus - a lament of the loss of dialogue between writer/author once ideas are codified and 'fixed' on a page that can be disseminated and appear in a context-less space without the benefit of directly interrogating the originator of a thought. Socrates hated writing and we know this because his most well known student, Plato, wrote all of his tirades down. 

Neal Postman has a chapter in 'Amusing Ourselves To Death' that replicated this lament made by the Dunkers - an oral Christian religion - about their loss of identity when forced to write down their beliefs in order to be recognized. Harold Innis (1954, 1998) in the 'Bias of Communication' describes it as an unseating of monopolies of knowledge creation/control as each new medium is introduced and necessarily consumes the dominating medium that came before. 

Hope this helps
Ravi

---------------------------
Ravindra N. Mohabeer, PhD
Media Studies
Vancouver Island University
>  
>> 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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>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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> 
> 
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---------------------------
Ravindra N. Mohabeer


On 2013-08-25, at 1:04 AM, Charles Ess <charles.ess at gmail.com> 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
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> 
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/