RYNSA: WORDS

This so-called ‘economic meltdown’ in my own beloved United States is, in my opinion, nothing more than a carefully-crafted misnomer designed to camouflage the much more comprehensive villainy of American capitalism. You can’t ‘meltdown’ a global system that has been gradually tearing away at economic sustainability for years! Everything that we’re experiencing now is the entirely predictable outcome of numerous erosive, bipartisan, neoliberal policy decisions dating back to the 1980s; policy decisions that privileged unregulated money markets and corporate interests over the needs of the state and its people.

Honestly, this was inevitable. We could see it coming from a long way off. Sunset, if you will, has finally fallen on Reagan’s ‘Morning in America’.

For details on we how got here I refer you to the writing of journalist David Sirota, author of The Uprising, who has recently provided us with a summary bibliography of key texts, and in only one sentence. From the Huffington Post, he says:

“As I note, this week we will see Thomas Frank’s wrecking crew using Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine to justify a bigger free lunch than David Cay Johnston ever imagined.”

For the life of me, I simply cannot understand how anyone could continue to espouse, or even attempt to justify, the philosophies of ‘free-market’ neoliberalism. The great, green capitalist machine has not righted itself, and now we’re expected to burn 700 billion US dollars (OMFG!!!) to cushion the fall of those who passionately claimed the market would save us. Ultimately, this massive and unprecedented bailout of the financial sector amounts to a soft landing for the least deserving and most hypocritical among us.

Politically, both the republicans and the democrats have apparently converged to reform the fascist party, an orgy of wealth, exclusivity, and corruption. With rare exception (thank you Mr. Kucinich), there is no dissent, no opposition in Washington. There’s the money, and then there’s us. The US is officially a capitalist wasteland where gains are privatized and losses socialized, and the working poor always, always foot the bill.

If ever the phrase ‘the emperor has no clothes’ was relevant to our national discourse, it would be now. And like many of my countrymen and women, I’m just sick of it. Disgust prods me awake at night, like a wiry, old finger jabbing me in the ribcage. I can’t get that ethereal Dorthea Lange photograph out of my head: a furrowed brow and three kids, the world in black-n-white, to have and to have not.

In all probability it won’t be as bad as my night frights suggest. And I hate that fear can grip me so. But then again, what do I know? I’m not a money-man… I’m just one of the millions who have to pay for it when the money-men fuck up!

Argh!!!

It looks as though the world’s multinational corporations have graduated from Maoist ‘reeducation’ camp just in time for the Summer games. According to this article in BusinessWeek, global companies, some from the United States, have recently taken a decidedly nationalistic approach to advertising in Chinese media, and all with the goal of wooing new customers to their brand. 

This is really not much of a surprise. Foreign companies wrapping themselves in the flag–in this case a bright, red one–is nothing new, and it was bound to happen sooner or later in China. There’s certainly a lot of money to be made from the emergent market that is the Chinese mainland, especially so during the Olympics. Corporate interests know this. They’re not gonna let a golden opportunity pass them by.

However, I do worry that corporations are stoking an already healthy fire. National pride is dangerous regardless of the nation in question. When that particular passion is combined with large numbers of disenfranchised people (China in a nutshell), it could spell future chaos in the form of violence, mob rule, or, in the American context, mass adoption of brutal foreign policies (ie, the asinine Bush Doctrine). 

In any case, it’s important to remember that flattering advertising does not a comrade Lei Feng make. Please believe me. As a well-seasoned serf in the global fraud that is economic neoliberalism, I know of what I speak. These corporations couldn’t give two chopsticks what happens to China.

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. 

Lately, I have noticed that there is a significant debate among those in the field of digital storytelling: should we use the latest and greatest technological tools, or whatever is available and useful at the time?  In other words, ‘high’ or ‘low’?

For me this represents a false dichotomy, as is often the case with such stark dualisms of this kind.  Actually, when it comes to digital anything (cameras, computers, whatever) there’s really no such thing as ‘low’ tech.  This is a conceit of privileged, ‘first-world’ artists and activists who have been enjoying regular and consistent access to electricity, leisure time, and thriving new tech markets.

That being said, there is a difference between a $10,000 HD, three-chip digital video camera with XLR inputs, for example, and the disposable, point-and-shoot, cardboard and plastic cameras you can get at an American gas station for twenty bucks.  So, there certainly are useful points to be discussed from both perspectives.

One argument that is made towards using costly, ‘high’ technology in the classroom, community center, or other such environment, is the importance of introducing disenfranchised individuals to otherwise inaccessible state-of-the-art production tools.  This is of value not only for general knowledge of how high quality media, etc., is created and distributed, but also for the psychological affect of encouraging marginal folks to see themselves as within reach of the mainstream production systems.  Sometimes it is enough that people have access, or feel that they have access, to excellence, whether or not it is actually utilized.  According to the professional literature presented to me at the VCA, this ideas is referred to generically as ‘avowal,’ as in the acknowledgment or affirmation of participation or belonging.

On the other side of the debate, some CCD (community cultural development) practitioners prefer to take a decidedly streamlined, DIY approach to media education and digital storytelling.  These professionals (and amateurs, for that matter) see access to production tools as an inherently political issue, and one that cannot be divorced from larger, global economic realities.  They believe that technology, whether low or high, simply does not exist in a vacuum.  Without verging too much into Marxism, current neoliberal, capitalistic, global circumstances require distinct class divisions, wherein some folks have and other do not.  Therefore it is seen by many as a terrible mistake to facilitate the desire on the part of disenfranchised digital storytellers to participate in the mainstream media systems that have consistently sustained their marginality.  The discussion is not about ‘high’ and ‘low’ tech so much as it the political contexts of the human being who use it.

If you couldn’t tell by my writing, I am leaning towards the latter in this game of high-low.  Though I recognize the value of certain psychological impacts to CCD work of this kind, I also understand that we cannot build a movement of informed and engaged, tech and media savvy citizens on good feelings alone.  My belief thus far is that there should also be some meta-level talk around the political and economic context of digital storytelling.  If professionals in the field considered the bigger picture in this way, then I truly believe we could move beyond simplistic, materialistic debates and focus more consciously on the liberating potential of our work.  The people are more important than the tools they use.

So, my answer to the question of using ‘high’ or ‘low’ forms of technology is easy: yes!