RYNSA: WORDS

On the August 12th episode of Filmschool — an excellent podcast/radio show out of the University of California at Irvine (KUCI 88.9 FM) — hosts Nathan Callahan and Mike Kaspar interviewed author and filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman about her new cinematic project, Stealing America: Vote By Vote. This feature length documentary explores voting fraud and the overall integrity of American democracy vis-a-vis the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

Beyond simply calling into question the legitimacy of the final tally, Fadiman and company (including usual leftist suspect Peter Coyote as narrator) call for widespread reform of the national democratic system. On the website for the film viewers are encouraged to “become part of the solution” and “…get active in the fight for our democracy” by registering to vote, writing letters to persons of interest, making phone calls, wearing stickers and/or buttons, and a whole slew of other tasks. In other words, exactly what you might expect from a director that recently published a book entitled, Producing with Passion: Making Films that Make a Difference.

In that I haven’t yet seen this film (or read Fadiman’s book) I won’t comment on the strength of its message. I suspect that in my case, irregardless of craft, it will be just another case of preaching to the choir. I mean, is this really still in doubt? Aren’t we already aware of the problem? And, more importantly, will placing a microscope over the many flaws of the electoral system be enough to elicit a response from what appears to be a fairly disaffected American citizenry?

God, I sure hope so…

As part of my graduate studies I am required to design a ‘research’ project that somehow relates to the profession of Community Cultural Development (CCD).  Initially, I was hoping to actually go out into Melbourne and engage with some undefined group of people.  Potentialities included the Chinese, youth, migrant populations, and so on.  But after a more thorough look at my timeline, and a rather honest conversation with my prescribed tutor, it became clear that this goal was not really feasible.

So now I have embarked on a truncated literary review of creativity as a concept.  It is a subject I kind of stumbled into, ass-backwards, and have since taken up as one of the fruits of my graduate school labor.  Specifically, I am studying the difference between Eastern ideas around creativity and those of the West.  It’s a relatively small field, but highly intriguing, and there are potential consequences that reach into nearly every aspect of the human experience.

But don’t all academics make that claim about their work?!

Anyway, I am currently collecting books and articles about creativity.  One such book, and the foundation for my interest in this stuff, is entitled Creativity: When East Meets West, edited by Sing Lau, Ana N N Hui, and Grace Y C Ng. You can actually download a free copy of the first chapter (in PDF format) that describes the content of the book.

I’ve only read a few articles so far, but it has turned out to be especially fascinating. The perceived Chinese perspective on social responsibility as a precursor to creative expression is a relatively foregin concept in the West.  We tend more towards protecting the individual’s personal rights in creative endeavor (though not nearly as consistently as we think, I would add).

In any case, I recommend this anthology. It is weighted towards academic language, which is tedious, I know, but if you’re able to get through the science-speak and the numbers-heavy diagrams then you will surely be rewarded. The inherent optimism in each contributor’s writing is readily apparent. It makes me want to get back into the classroom–surrounded by all those emerging creative minds!

So there’s this professor named Mark Bauerlein in the English Department at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s recently published a book provocatively entitled, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. Catchy, eh?!

But, wait! There’s more! Mr. Bauerlein somehow decided it prudent to beef-up his already lengthy sub-line with the following–very revealing–parenthetical statement: (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).

Wow! Mr. Bauerlein’s got some balls, aint he?!

If it wasn’t already clear from my dismissive tone, I fall (just barely) within this maligned age demographic. Subsequently, I am having a hard time taking Mr. Bauerlein, and his polemic text, seriously. That old adage passed down to me from my parents is only half right, it seems. For my generation at least, we’d better not judge a book by its cover, for the cover’s just gonna judge us right back!

In any case, I actually agree with some of what Mr. Bauerlein appears to be suggesting about the so-called ‘digital age.’ In an interview with YouthWorker Journal, he says of internet alienation:

“The Internet allows people to create their own little universe. They only make contact with things that interest them. They enclose themselves in the music they like, the politics they like—and what we see is an isolation of young people who really get into this world. This is spiritually withering.”

From personal experience I can attest to the validity of this claim. Maybe I’m wrong here, but the cosmopolitan promise of digital technology hasn’t necessarily been realized in the way that it is sometimes envisioned. Isolated cliques are forming online (in CCD we describe it in slightly less damning terms as ‘communities of interest’), and in much the same way they form in the real world–by language, nationality, race, gender, political persuasion, etc. ‘Social networking,’ in this sense, is anything but; it’s more like ‘ghetto networking’ with fancy electronics. Needless to say, this doesn’t bode well for engaging public policy, much less real socio-political transformation.

That being said, I have to ask… what is it with baby-boomers and their relentless deconstruction of today’s youth culture?! I’m getting a little tired of all these elite, me-generation pundits deflecting their own mistakes onto other people. I mean, really, y’all, who’s running the show here?! Who’s leading academia, the government, the corporate giants that fund and mold the online (and offline) media environments in their own self-interest? Is it the Xers? The Millennials? Forty years ago we weren’t supposed to trust anyone over thirty, and now we’ve flipped the script?! Make up your damn mind already, will ya?!!

It is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy for Mr. Bauerlein to belittle young folk with such ridiculous, postmodern rhetoric. Perhaps I should redirect my ire at the pissy little editors at the publishing house who thought they were being clever with this title. After all, seems like the boomer thing to do–pass the buck.

UPDATE:

There’s a fairly interesting interview, by the way, over at NPR. It eventually develops into an ironic, Broadway-inspired send-up of Bauerlein’s curmudgeonly position.

Take that, boomers!

There are a handful of really good talk radio shows out there that deal with media in popular culture. One of my favorites is Media Matters with Bob McChesney. Granted, Mr. McChesney is an academic steeped in the traditions of formal, heady, and slightly monotone conversation styles, but he also has really interesting guests of whom he asks really interesting questions. I always feel like I’ve just left an excellent cultural studies lecture immediately following a Media Matters episode.

Anyway, last week there was a particularly intriguing interview with Janice Peck, an associate professor at the University of Colorado who recently published a new book entitled “The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era.” Basically, Peck aligns Oprah’s success (she’s an absolutely massive media presence stateside) with the rise of neoliberalism, an economic ideology that became a significant political force in the 1980’s, and with sweeping consequences on/for the globalization of today.

Having not read the book I cannot comment on its quality. But the interview on Media Matters was fascinating predominantly because it was one of the first, really articulate, well-constructed criticisms of the Oprah machine I have ever heard. And it is most definitely a machine–an empire of television, magazines, books, websites, and so on, each churning out Oprah’s particular brand of ‘informed’ public discourse. This media goliath, supported mainly by suburban, middle-class white girls, is very, very lucrative. According to Peck, Oprah Inc., if you will, is worth over two billion dollars!  I suppose it’s actually quite amazing, in a horrific, overdose of snake-oil kinda way.

On that note, I must admit that I enjoyed Peck’s criticism because it also vindicated me for much of what I have felt about Oprah for years, ever since I was a kid back in high school, when I was just starting to develop a more sophisticated socio-economic and political consciousness. Painfully, I distinctly remember being forced to listen to some of my least-inspiring instructors, even up through college, laud Oprah with near religious zealotry for the now very popular Book Club, which they believed would eventually do more for American literacy than the classroom ever could.

“Hmph,” I would grunt.  Even then I could smell the cow manure of idolotry.  

In any case, Oprah is certainly a force with which to be reckoned. I hope Ms. Peck’s text will go a long way in expanding the conversation to include larger cultural (read: economic and political) trends.  Though, honestly, I suspect it’s just going to piss off advertisers and housewives alike.

NOTE:

I did not include any links in this post to Oprah’s many (business) web ventures. You’re gonna have to do that on your own.